Kadapa, India – Three years ago, Venkat Shobha Rani quit her job as a primary school teacher to help her husband tend their three-acre (1.2-hectare) farm, part of a growing number of rural folk in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who are moving to organic farming.

“It’s a lot of labour, but organic farming is a lot better,” Shobha Rani told Al Jazeera in Dugganagaripalli, a village in Kadapa district, 450km (280 miles) south of Hyderabad.

Shobha is now one of several hundred Andhra Pradesh small farmers who are part of a government-run, community-managed natural farming programme launched in 2015 as an alternative to burdening farmers with soaring fertiliser and chemical costs. The initiative is arguably unique in India.

Read more at: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/2/one-of-indias-richest-temples-goes-organic-with-its-laddus