The New Crop

Urbanites who are quitting their corporate careers to work in the farm sector are changing more than just their occupations

- Jasodhara banerjee

When I worked in the software industry, we would work on tight deadlines. We would stay up all night and work to meet those deadlines. But you can stand on a farm all night, and nothing is going to happen. It will rain when it has to. The crops will grow when they have to.

In India, 3 lakh farmers committed suicide between 1995 and 2015, indicating the debilitating conditions plaguing the rural economy. As innumerable people abandon their traditional occupations on farms and move to urban areas, it is difficult to imagine hardcore urban people with cushy jobs turning to the farm sector to make a living; to till the land and nurture what it grows, or help others do it. And yet, they are.

Educated and experienced in myriad professions—from software engineering and chartered accountancy, to marketing and sales— they have chosen to learn everything from scratch, and, in turn, bring a fresh perspective. The change that this new crop of farmers is bringing about is hardly confined to their own lives: Not only are they brining in new techniques of farming and marketing, they are turning to age- old traditions, techniques and tastes that have been long forgotten in the ever-increasing pressure to increase yields of a limited number of crops.