For years, Deepak Sabharwal knew food largely from the other side of the table.

He had spent nearly two decades in the corporate world, working with companies such as General Electric (GE), PepsiCo, and Tata. His days were about meetings, numbers, and growth. Farming was something he spent time doing on weekends, at his family’s farms in Pushkar, Rajasthan.

Then one day, he noticed the pesticides being used on his own farm. Around the same time, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. The two things came together in his mind in a way he could not ignore.

“I began wondering what we were really eating every day, and that was a simple but uncomfortable question to ask,” he tells The Better India.

That question eventually took him from boardrooms to fields. His hands-on farming journey began in 2012, while he was still working at GE, and he spent almost four years travelling to Pushkar on weekends to learn farming and experiment on his family’s land.

Today, he is based in Delhi NCR and is the co-founder and CEO of Earthy Tales Organics Private Limited. The company was formally started in December 2018 with a focus on natural farming, farmer livelihoods, and making produce grown without synthetic pesticides and fertilisers more accessible to urban families.

Deepak wanted Earthy Tales to do more than sell vegetables. For the co-founder, it was about fixing a disconnect he had begun to see between the soil, the farmer, and the person eventually eating the food.

Years of working closely with farmers taught him that organic farming involves much more than avoiding synthetic pesticides and fertilisers.

Here are seven lessons he wishes anyone entering the space would understand.

1. Start with the soil

It is tempting to begin a farming business by asking one question. What should I grow?

Deepak believes there is another question that should come first. What is the condition of my soil?

Before investing heavily, he advises testing the soil and water, understanding what was previously grown on the land, and finding out which chemicals may have been used there. Because for him, organic farming does not begin with a label. It begins underground.

“Organic farming begins with soil, not with certification or branding,” he says.

A healthy farm may require compost, organic matter, mulching, natural inputs, better water management and, where appropriate, livestock integration. The aim is to move away from synthetic pesticides and fertilisers while gradually rebuilding the health of the land.

That is also why he advises beginners not to convert an entire farm at once. He suggests starting with a small patch, trying a crop and observing how it performs over one or two........

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