Live Life Farm Style

Want to live in a city and grow your own food in a village nearby? There are companies that can help.

- Meenakshi Sushma

IF YOU are a city dweller who wants to practise farming on weekends for fun, or a health conscious individual who wants to be sure that the vegetable on the table has been grown without the use of pesticides, this is just the initiative for you. Three companies in Haryana are offering land where you can grow what you want for a nominal price.

The companies—Edible Routes, Green Leaf India and Organic Maati—take land on lease from farmers in and around Gurugram and Palwal districts and sublet it. Neha Goyal, a lawyer based in Delhi, says she leased 0.2 hectares (ha) from Edible Roots in July because she wanted to be close to nature and learn about agriculture. “I plan to grow tomatoes,” she says.

Edible Routes is owned by Kapil Mandawewala, who launched the company in 2010 in Delhi to help people practise organic farming. In June 2018, Mandawewala leased a little over 4 ha from a landowner in Gurugram’s Garhi Harsaru village and started subletting plots to subscribers. As per the contract offered by Edible Routes, a subscriber has to lease at least 0.2 ha for six months. The cost for this comes to