Based in the Kanha forest of Madhya Pradesh, Earth Focus Foundation (EFF) is a community-led organisation working with farmers from the Baiga and Gond tribal communities. While their vision is to restore the landscape surrounding the forests, they recognise that to do this means to work closely with its forest-dwelling communities. EFF supports the livelihoods of these farmers by showcasing and selling these products through their website. These include millets like kodo and kutki, and mahua syrup, all of which can be traced back to their farmlands.
Aaran Patel and Vipul Gupta founded EFF in 2019, with a focus on children’s education, mainly in the local primary schools and anganwadis. However, when they realised that employment-driven migration was disrupting schooling, they started to develop livelihoods in-situ. By building trust with Sardar Charan Singh, headman of the Chichrangpur village, they were also able to gradually develop an agro-horti-forestry model across the village. Their goal was to help communities put their barren land (along the Banjar river) to productive use through agroforestry and non-chemical farming. Farmers grew various native crops—pulses, oilseeds, millets, vegetables, tubers, bamboo, and trees (like mango, guava, mahua)—while also working on soil restoration, and water and ecological health.
Seeing the success of the pilot project in Chichrangpur, interest from local communities grew, including from Mukki and Parsa Tola, located across the Banjar river. As more farmers joined the program, difficulties in harvesting and processing millets came up as an issue. So, Earth Focus set up a small, five-stage processing unit for local farmers. In addition, they have been working with a consortium of partners to assess and fill gaps in the millet ecosystem, including seeds, harvesting, processing, local consumption, and more.
Their livelihoods program is designed to be community-led; collective decisions are made on matters like water, but decisions on each plot are retained by individual farmers. In addition, they hire young people from the Baiga and Gond communities as Samuday Preraks, or community mobilisers, who are trained by their team to help farmers monitor their plantations, produce non-chemical farm inputs, and more.
This short documentary will help you learn more about the indigenous communities that they work with in Kanha.
The Locavore Bite
TL Bite offers a glimpse into how a partner producer runs their operations, and reflects their core principles and values. The idea is to provide insights into their practices and highlight their positive efforts descriptively. We have identified seven key areas of assessment – origin and source of ingredients, composition and integrity of the products, workforce policies, production practices, community-related initiatives, approach towards preserving or celebrating traditional knowledge and the materials used in packaging. While this assessment may not be entirely comprehensive, we hope it helps you make an informed decision about why you might want to support them, and the ways in which to.
The information below offers you a snapshot of where Earth Focus Foundation stands on these parameters. We have put this together based on several rounds of conversation with Isha Chawla and Dolly Aswani, both consultants at Earth Focus. Click on a piece of the pie below to find out more.
Why We Love Earth Focus
- Community leadership and mobilisation – To restore the region’s soil health and biodiverse habitat, the Earth Focus team of Samuday Preraks—community mobilisers—work on and off the field with local communities. They train farmers on fencing, preparing non-chemical inputs, accessing seeds and saplings, and monitoring plantations. Earth Focus also hires local community members to drive their education program, which approaches children’s education through a more contextual and sensitive lens.
- Supporting local livelihoods – The state Horticulture Department and MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) provide farmers from Gond and Baiga communities with free saplings and financial incentives to care for them. EFF creates an enabling environment by installing fences, providing water resources, access to government schemes and capacity building.
- Building awareness – They educate farmers on available government schemes and actively help in disseminating relevant resources. Through this, farmers are informed about government schemes such as the State Bamboo Mission, which aims to increase bamboo plantation to supplement farm income.
- Preserving native species – The potential of their pilot project in Chichrangpur has inspired other local farmers to work with them. By planting native trees like neem and mahua, farmers ensure the continuity of forest resources that they depend on for coming generations.
How has working with the Gond and Baiga communities shaped your work at Earth Focus?
“Earth Focus exists for and because of these communities—we see ourselves simply as a catalyst to bringing change in this landscape. Our efforts are built on their knowledge and traditional practices, their relationship with nature, and their drive to take the work forward.
The Baiga and Gond tribes are very different from each other, both unique in their cultures and traditions, and it’s been extremely rewarding to have an insight into their worlds. There were things we had to be mindful of as well, in particular, about building trust, which is an ongoing process. But to answer in short, it isn’t our work that they have shaped—it’s shared work, which has been built by the community and Earth Focus together.”
— Vipul Gupta and Aaran Patel, Founders of Earth Focus
Products We Recommend
Kutki Millet
Kodo Millet
Mahua Syrup
How to Buy
If you would like to learn more about Earth Focus Foundation or try their products, check out their website. If you’re interested in supporting them in other ways, please contact us at connect@staginglatest.thelocavore.in.
At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of a producer transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
