Part - 4 Name: Priya Salvi Where: Done, Thane district As Maharashtra’s villages face mounting pressure from chemical-intensive farming, water shortages, and rapid conversion of agricultural land to other uses, one woman farmer in Done (in Thane) is transforming her five-acre ancestral property into a working model of sustainable living. For Mumbai-based Priya Salvi, 56, the answer to the growing environmental crisis lies in returning to nature’s systems. On her farm, bananas, mangoes, cashews and guavas thrive without synthetic chemicals, while fallen leaves, crop residue and pruned branches are recycled into manure and mulch. Armed with a Master’s degree in Horticulture from the Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, Salvi’s journey to farming was unusual. She spent years tackling Mumbai’s daunting waste-management challenges before ‘retiring’ to a rural setup around 2008, to implement her ideas about sustainability into practice on the chunk of land owned by her family Done in Thane district. Today, the ‘Salvi Farm’ is regarded as an experiment in biodiversity, soil conservation, water harvesting and need-based living, besides providing food. Though far away from urban comforts, Salvi describes herself as a prosperous, happy and satisfied person in her tiny lush green paradise where she pursues her passion for farming minus any chemical inputs. “A lot of chemicals are used in modern agriculture which are causing environmental degradation and affecting human health,” Salvi tells The Perfect Voice. So far, she has directly or indirectly inspired and trained over 3000 farmers, including many women. After her graduation, Salvi joined the ‘Save Bombay Committee’ to promote solid waste management, and within four years the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) took her on board as a consultant on waste management. Perturbed by the utter lack of civic sense among both authorities and citizens, she launched awareness camps, introduced vermi-processing, helped develop the Advanced Locality Management (ALM) concept to create a functional network involving citizens and the civic body, earning global attention. Yet, despite years of work on waste management and agriculture, Salvi felt cut-off from Mother Nature – a feeling that eventually led her to take up full time farming. In the last 17 years, Salvi has run her family farm virtually solo, earning the respect of the villagers, the farming community, and the society at large. Her agro-philosophy is returning to the soil what comes from it, be it fallen leaves, crop straw, pruned branches and other biomass, by converting them into mulch or manure through vermi-processing and other natural processes. She adheres to optimum tillage – scraping only the upper layer of soil instead of repeatedly turning it over – for utilizing its natural potential rather than forcing it to produce through chemical inputs. “Sustainable farming must go with sustainable living… Once you live in a sustainable way, your needs are reduced and are met by farming,” she points out.
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