Working closely with Adivasis in Odisha, Living Farms ensures self-sufficiency within the communities through seed banks, nutrition gardens, and intergenerational learning.
Established in 2008 by social activist Debjeet Sarangi, Living Farms is a non-profit organisation based in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. They work with Kondh and Saura Adivasi communities in Rayagada and Gajapati districts to promote food sovereignty, improve nutrition, and create sustainable livelihood opportunities. They attain this by conducting field research, advocating for community governance, organising training programmes on community health and nutrition, and establishing seed banks and nutrition gardens.
Living Farms emerged from the three years, 2006 to 2009, Sarangi spent in the Niamgiri Hills in southwestern Odisha, learning about traditional agro-ecological practices followed by Adivasi communities—particularly the women and elders—in the region. He believed that their knowledge of farming, seed conservation, and foraging of forest foods could help address challenges pertaining to food and nutrition security in rural Odisha. Living Farms began as an in-person collaboration platform where Adivasi communities across districts in Odisha could come together to share information on different farming and foraging techniques, and work together to address food insecurity and undernutrition.
Key Areas of Work
Why We Love Living Farms
- Establishing community seed banks: In 2018—in collaboration with Action Child Aid, a Danish NGO working with underprivileged children in India and Terre des Hommes, a German charity working with children and youth—Living Farms helped Adivasi farmers establish community seed banks in Gajapati and Rayagada. Community members took ownership of the seed banks, with two primary conditions: First, a farmer may contribute their own native seeds to the bank in exchange for seeds they lack; and second, after the harvest, they must return double the amount of seeds they borrowed. Living Farms has now helped establish 35 seed banks, with around 10-12 farmers contributing to each one, across Gajapati and Rayagada districts. These banks operate at a small scale with simple registers to prevent any financial or logistical issues. The seeds are dried and mixed with neem leaves to prevent decay, and stored in earthen pots.
- Building nutrition gardens to meet dietary needs: Living Farms organises awareness campaigns on nutrition gardens for Adivasi communities across Gajapati and Rayagada. These gardens provide a year-round supply of produce that meet diverse dietary needs, with each garden containing 12-13 native varieties of fruits and vegetables like bori bejra (cherry tomato), putal chichili (finger-sized ridge gourd), dumuni lau (round bottle gourd), dimbu lau (high-neck bottle gourd), sukuli heyana (white brinjal), and hapka heyana (thorny brinjal). They also plant staples such as okra, pumpkin, tomato, brinjal, papaya, and custard apple. Living Farms has built demonstration gardens in central locations, where farmers understand how a nutrition garden works, and how they can build one.
- Supporting community development initiatives through intergenerational activities:
In recent years, owing to an increase in cultivation of cash crops and horticulture, the Kondh community is at risk of losing their traditional farming practices—such as mixed or poly-cultural farming—and foodways. Living Farms works closely with the community to help protect their forests and food sovereignty. While younger generations are shifting to urban areas to seek employment, Living Farms facilitates intergenerational activities like reflection sessions and community meet-ups where the youth can voice their concerns, and come up with solutions. For instance, in Musatakiri, a small farming village in Rayagada, the Budharaja Youth Group secured 200 mango saplings through Living Farms to establish community orchards. The proceeds from the fruit sales went toward improving local education. They also petitioned the Gram Sabha to improve the overall infrastructure of the village, which resulted in sanctioned road work and a new community hall.
How They Work
Living Farms’s work in numbers
- Number of team members: 45
- Number of farmers: 7,000
- Number of villages: 340
- Number of adolescents: 6,000
- Number of community-led programmes: 6
- Number of seed banks: 40
- Number of nutrition gardens: 7,000
Blending agro-ecological methods of farming with traditional knowledge
The Kondh community traditionally practise mixed or poly-cultural farming. However, these sustainable practices underwent a shift during the Green Revolution with the introduction of high-yielding hybrid varieties of rice and millets, and cash crops like cashew and cotton. Families in hilly regions hence started growing only rice and millets for consumption, with no access to adequate irrigation facilities for cultivating any other vegetables. This led to major concerns of malnutrition and food scarcity. Living Farms aims to revive traditional methods of farming by providing agro-ecological solutions including mixed cropping where they can cultivate indigenous, climate-resistant varieties of vegetables and fruits like spinach, okra, brinjal, banana, papaya, and jackfruit. They also train farmers on improving soil fertility through methods such as composting and mulching, and use traditional pest-control mechanisms involving kerada, karanj and arak leaves, and the branches of the hurna tree to protect crops from rodents. With these practices in place, the communities are able to plant native varieties of seeds like kala dhan (black rice), kosla (little millet), and kandul (pigeon pea).
Earth4ever conducts various outreach programmes encouraging people to get more involved in the restoration of forests. They spread awareness through activities led by local tribal communities, botanists, naturalists, and other nature experts. These include tree appreciation walks, planting native flora, and clean-up drives for those living in Mumbai and Wada. For instance, in order to restorate the degraded parts of the Aarey forest, they collaborated with the forest department, National Service Scheme volunteers, CSR volunteers and Youth for Aarey, a volunteer-led community protecting Mumbai’s green spaces, and mobilised citizens to plant over 600 native trees, shrubs and climbers such as pangara (tigers claw), karanj (Indian beech), ran aboli (wild firecracker flower), karvanda (carandas plum), and palash (flame of the forest). During these outreach programmes, they ensure that people understand the native forest ecosystems and their ecological heritage.
Participatory Learning & Action (PLA)
Living Farms relies on the locals’ traditional knowledge and experiences for community mobilisation. A team member facilitates a PLA Meeting in a way that encourages community members to talk about their own personal experiences. The topics are first selected through a discussion with the community members after which Living Farms prepares a PLA Module, tests it with the community and finalises the topic of the module. For instance, in the Kalakani Hills, the easy availability of cheap packaged snacks began to create a nutritional deficit in the diets of adolescent girls and pregnant women. Living Farms hosted Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) meetings in order to revive the consumption of traditional foods as a means to meeting their nutritional needs. Under the leadership of Burgi Majhi, a woman from the Kondh community, women went back to growing and foraging for more nutritiously diverse food, like boda kangu (wild millet), kanadula (dal), amibili sago and kena sago (wild greens), and seasonal delicacies such as bausa chatu (bamboo mushrooms).
Supporting youth and adolescents
Through AVOICE (Adolescent Voice and Opportunity for Inclusive Change and Empowerment)—a three-year programme (2026–2029) implemented in rural Odisha, in partnership with Action Child Aid—Living Farms is working with 14,000 adolescents across 400 villages to improve their health and nutrition, challenge harmful gender norms, and encourage their participation in community decision-making. They promote adolescent-led change by strengthening their knowledge, voice, and leadership through peer groups and learning spaces. Here, young adults learn skills that help them develop health-related knowledge together with confidence, leadership, and critical awareness. The programme also encourages frontline workers who deliver response services like the ADVIKA Scheme, that supports adolescent girls, or the VHSND Scheme that delivers on-ground health services, to build stronger links between communities and government systems.
How You Can Help
If you’d like to volunteer, intern or partner with Living Farms in meaningful ways, reach out to Bichitra Biswal (Program Director) at livingfarmsoffice@gmail.com or +91 7077675173.
This story is part of our Food Systems Collective. At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of an organisation transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
Editor: Yashvi Shah
Copy Editor: Khorshed Deboo
