Soil Organic Content (SOC) is critical in farming. It determines how well soil holds water, delivers nutrients to plants, maintains structure, and supports the millions of microbes that make soil alive. When SOC drops below 0.5%, you’re looking at desert-like conditions where nothing grows without the farmer pumping in fertilisers. India’s farmland averages a shocking 0.3% SOC. Compare that to European Union cropland at 1.8%—that’s the gold standard.

A few weeks ago, Shashi Kumar, the founder of Akshayakalpa, shared something incredible from AK Farms. After years of regenerative practices, they’ve pushed their SOC up from 0.3% to an average of 1.5% even hitting 2.5% in some spots. They’ve taken what was essentially barren soil and brought it almost to European levels.

What this means is that farmers can use fewer or no chemicals. The food is genuinely more nutritious. And when cows eat fodder grown in this soil, the milk becomes rich in nutrients.

This is by far our best investment as Rainmatter, because AK’s focus is genuinely on the lives of farmers and their cows. The practices they’re teaching farmers are rebuilding the soil - which really is the farmer’s true wealth. The question now is whether they can scale this sustainably across more farms.

From their recent podcast, Good Food Talks.

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