Malvikaa Solanki and the 1000 Tree Project eZine highlights environmental initiatives

Malvikaa Solanki and the
1000 Tree Project
Let’s GROWAn eZine on Earth Matters
Issue 4
5June2020
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995
The Land of the
Thunder Dragon
Beyond the horizon lies Inﬁnite Possibility...

Like music and art, love of Nature is a
commonlanguagethatcantranscend
politicaland socialboundaries
- Jimmy Carter
T
he Neem Flow
er
Beautiful, fragrant,
and somehow mystical
Let’s GROW
Hello!
Welcome to the 4th edition of ‘Let’s Grow‚’ an
eZine on Earth matters. It’s World Environment
Day today - a day to commit ourselves anew to
doing what we can to show respect for our Earth.
In this issue we bring you:
How to create your very own Neem toothbrush
The story of the 1000-Tree Project
Glimpses of a uniquely earth-conscious country
Results of the Poster competition from last issue
A vegetable flower for you to identify, and
An invite to participate in a meme contest!
Mail us at info@theorganicfarm.in or WhatsApp
us at 90801 70795, and send us your memes - we
look forward eagerly to reading them!
Have a safe and happy fortnight!
Love,
Ramashree & Sumana

Photos - Verse - Tips - Insights - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Techniques - Proﬁles
Can you Identify this Flower?
Here is a flower of another
common country vegetable -
can you identify it?
Please WhatsApp us the
answer on or
mail us at:
info@theorganicfarm.in
We’ll post the names of the correct responders in
the next issue :-)
Congratulations to all these
readers who answered last
issue’s question correctly -
this is indeed a Beans flower
(Avarai)
Akila Vishwanath, Anuradha
Garimella, Ardhendu Sekhar Chatterjee, Arun
Menon, Banumathy Jayasurya, Chandrani
Ojha Chakraborty, Claribel Ezekiel, Kalpana
Manivannan, Mala Subramanian, Pramila
Annadanam, Radha Sudharshan, Sanvi Vivek
Bhat, Shivani Garimella, and Shivi Kapil
Thank you for sending in your answers! Do
send them in for this issue as well :-)

Ages: <6 years 1ﬆ
Prize - Ayaana Agarwal
Ages: 6 - 8 years 1ﬆ
Prize - Pernita Sree
2nd
Prize - Ayushmaan Sairam,
Samyuktha V, Smruthi Radhakrishnan
Ages: 9 - 12 1ﬆ
Prize - Aakannkshaa
2nd
Prize - S Dheeksha
Ages: 13 - 17 1ﬆ
Prize - Saanvi Sundar Raajan
Ages: 18 - 30 1ﬆ
Prize - Naren Gokulanathan
Thank you so much
dear participants,
for sending in your
creative and vibrant
artwork! Hope to
see you all send your
entries for the
meme conteﬆ too!
(Digital Entry)

Peeled
Stick
Peel
Yes, you’ve guessed it right, we’re talking
about neem toothbrushes. Experience has
juﬆ taught me that there’s more to it than
randomly breaking off a neem twig and using it, so here’s
everythingyouneedtoknowtohavearemarkablyeffective,
biodegradable, natural neem toothbrush:
Step 1: Selecting the Twig
Select a twig that is somewhat supple (a little
ﬆiffer than the end of an over-ripe okra) in
your hands, not hard / brittle, of about 15-18 cm in length
and 0.5 to 0.75 cm in diameter. The colour should be light
brown. (Check that your proposed toothbrush satisfies
these conditions before you break it off the plant!)
Step 2: Peeling It
Peel off the outer layer from one
end, for about 5 - 6 cm. You can
cut the peels, or pinch them off
with your nails. If you’ve selected
your twig correctly, the surface
below the peel will be slightly
moiﬆ to the touch.
DIY Toothbrush

Step 3: Forming the ‘Briﬆles’
After washing your twig thoroughly
in running water, place the peeled
end in your jaw between the 1ﬆ
molars, and press down a few
times. Check after a few ‘chews’ to
see if you have a nice, uneven
rectangular briﬆle-like portion.
Repeat a few times. The beauty of this is that you’ll get a
cuﬆomised head, moulded by your own cusps, thats juﬆ
the right size for your teeth! Be warned though, it’ll taﬆe
a little bitter - juﬆ rinse your mouth once in a while.
How to Use:
Now your brush is ready - rub the ‘briﬆles’ on all the
surfaces of your teeth, rinsing thoroughly every time
you feel the taﬆe has become too bitter.
I admit to feeling a little contrite about breaking twigs
oﬀ a tree, but the juﬆiﬁcation for this is that if we all did
this, and didn’t have to have thousands of
toothbrushes made for us out of plaﬆics and
nylon, the overall harm to the environment
would be much less…
Chewed
‘Bristles’
Customized!

Some of the Advantages of Using Neem Toothbrushes
You can reuse them - after each use, just cut off the used part.
Keep going till the twig is over
Absolutely natural and biodegradable
Great cleaning - it treats dental plaque very effectively
Veryfreshbreath!Iassureyou,you’llrinseoffagreatmanytimes
more than with tooth-paste, and this will give you fresher breath
andacleanermouth,quiteapartfromNeem’scleaningproperties
Neem has plenty of medicinal properties, and you’ll beneﬁt from
them all, ﬁrst thing each morning!
Happy brushing!

The Land of the Thunder Dragon
All through the global pandemic, we’ve been looking up
the death-tolls in various countries, comparing them,
discussing them and fretting over them. The one
country we haven’t really been speaking about
is Bhutan; the death-toll there is zero.*
Another key Bhutanese
score that is zero is their net
greenhouse gas
emissions quantum - in fact
Bhutan is the world’s only
carbon-negative country, making
it an apt place to discuss on World
Environment Day.
Environmental concerns are at the core of Bhutan’s
development ﬆrategies. The Bhutanese people face their
own set of challenges, but they’ve ﬆill committed to
environmental conservation goals like preserving 60% of
the land area under foreﬆ cover, designating more than
40% of territory as national parks, reserves and other
protected areas, and moﬆ recently, to identifying a
further 9% of land area as biodiversity
corridorslinkingtheprotectedareas. In
2013 their government announced
the aspiration that Bhutan will
*at the time of writing

become the ﬁrﬆ country in the world with 100 percent organic
farming. And inﬆead of measuring their country’s progress
inGDPvalues,theytalkaboutGNH-GrossNationalHappiness.
Today, my daughter’s school reopened online after the summer,
and in the orientation session they spoke about learning from
eachother -Bhutandoesseemtohavesomethinggoingthatwe
could all learn from,
doesn’t it?
Bibliography:
"Bhutan set to plough lone furrow as world's ﬁrst wholly organic country". The
Guardian. 11 February 2013. Archived from the original on 9 August 2013. Re-
trieved 25 January 2013.
Paull, John (2017) "Four New Strategies to Grow the Organic Agriculture
Sector" Archived 4 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Agrofor International
Journal, 2(3):61–70.
New IUCN State Members". Switzerland: IUCN Newsletter. January 2012.
Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
"Parks of Bhutan". Bhutan Trust Fund for Environmental Conservation online.
Bhutan Trust Fund. Archived from the original on 2 July 2011. Retrieved 26
March 2011.
"The Organisation". Bhutan Trust Fund for Environmental Conservation online.
Bhutan Trust Fund. Archived from the original on 29 March 2010. Retrieved 26
March 2011.

4 farmers, 10 acres, 1 Solanki, countless
workhours and infinite passion - these
are the ingredients that make up the
1000-Tree Project.
This is a project conceived by Swayyam, a
not-for-profit organisation founded by Malvikaa Solanki
at Yelachatti Village, Karnataka. This is a place in south
India where a quiet transformation is
taking place; farmers are coming
together, land is being reclaimed,
waterisbeingputbackintothesoil.....
Let’s hear all about this transformation from Malvikaa
Solanki, whose brainchild this project is:
Tell us, how did the 1000 Tree Project idea originate?
“Well, the drought in 2016 was a wake-up call for me…
During this time I saw so many cattle die that the
carcasses would lie on the road, people did not even have
the energy to take the effort to bury them, because there
weretoomany…Thisisanareawithalotofwildlife,and
wild dogs would come and get them at night… Nagappa,
my neighbour, hadn’t even told me that eight out of
his ten cows had died…This happened in the third year
I was working on the land, creating a little
MalvikaaSolankiandthe1000TreeProject
Credit: https://swayyam.org/projects/1000-tree-project/

2016 2017
Pictures of Open Shell Farm retrieved from https://swayyam.org/projects/open-shell-farm/
2018
oasis - a food foreﬆ and a self-suﬃcient syﬆem on a piece
of hethertounyieldingland…Butwitnessingthesescenes
of drought raised the queﬆion - What about the people
around me? How is my experience
changing anything? So I asked:
What could have avoided this
situation?
What if we had a tree syﬆem?
Treesare more reliable,they can
survive drought, they’re useful for
fodder too. When there is no rain, farmers lose their ﬁeld
crops, they do not have food, do not have anything to sell.
sihtdnihebthguohtehtsawsihT.seertrofostonsisihttuB
project - helping farmers create a tree-based agro-foreﬆry
syﬆem thus ensuring food, fodder, and livelihood security
for them. Once farmers become self-reliant in terms of
food, fodder, and livelihood, the ﬆress on the fragile foreﬆ
ecosyﬆem which is adjacent to this area also reduces....We
were looking at a holiﬆic, regenerative design, at diversity,
native drought-tolerant species, and species that provide
for the nutrition of the family while also ensuring income
generation.”
“The idea is to
provide food,
fodder and
livelihood
security for
farmers...”

How did the farmers react to this idea?
“It took a while to convince them. We said you can ﬆill
continue to have your crops, but at the same time, keep
putting in tree syﬆems to ensure security for yourself. We
cannot talk about climate change or chemical run-off or
ecological balance to farmers suffering from lack of basics,
so we said, right now you have a bore-well - but what if
tomorrow it runs dry? If you go for a tree-based
agro-foreﬆry syﬆem, designed in such a way that you
have different fruit trees and crops and timber, giving you
income throughout the year, tomorrow even if your
bore-well dries, you ﬆill have your trees, and they will
suﬆain you. And your bore-well will also be maintained,
because when you have your tree syﬆems, you are
rechargingthewater-table...Sointhiswaywetriedtospeak
in the language that makes more sense to them. Slowly,
peoplewereconvincedandtheprojectﬆartedtotakeshape…
So what are the exact mechanics of the project?
“We work with marginal farmers,
holding less than 5 acres of land. A
minimum of 4 such farmers, at
leaﬆ 1 of whom is a woman, with a
minimum of 10 acres between
them, need to form a collective to
takepartintheproject.Theacreage
“This is a
tree-based
holistic
agro-forestry
system”

has to be continuous between them. What we do is, we
bear75%ofthecoﬆoffencingthelandwithsolar-powered
electric fencing (which does not kill any animals, juﬆ
deters them), and the farmers of the collective bear 25%.
Initially some people thought it was a fencing project. I
said no, its a trees project - in every acre, farmers have to
agree to sow 100 trees. We have a clear application form
thatﬆates allthis.Weworkwiththefarmerstochoosethe
saplings, use better methods, to plough on contour, to
follow organic principles. We support them in making
trenches and swales according to the contour of the land.
Theyareindividualfarmerswithinthesamefence,butthe
water harveﬆing design is done for the entire collective.
The farmers focus on crops that are primarily for food and
fodder, not cash crops, and sell the surplus after saving
seeds. And we support them in all of this.
“We ﬆarted in 2017. 12 acres connected to the Open Shell
Farm* formed the 1ﬆ collective called Vasudha. They
pitched in with labour, and we got the fencing erected. For
the ﬁrﬆ time in a decade, everyone ploughed their ﬁelds
and grew a bumper horse-gram crop. Everyone took home
a good amount of produce,
they sold it and made some
money. We are working on
a second collective called

Suvarnaof12farmerfamiliesand48acresofland.Weare
juﬆ about to get the fencing going for them…”
The ﬆory of the 1000 Trees project is a living ﬆory that
grows each day towards its goal of ecologically balanced
self-suﬆenance for the farmers, and a happy abundance
for the land…
Thank you very much Malvikaa Solanki Ma’am, for
taking the time to speak to us...!
*Open Shell Farm is a learning and a demonﬆration site
for regenerative design, using permaculture and agro-
ecology principles. This is the piece of land Solanki ﬆarted
out with, and it now abounds in biodiversity, in native as
wellaspioneer species,with itsownwaterharveﬆingand
waﬆe management syﬆems, a seed-bank, a nursery and
dwelling spaces. The ﬆory of Open Shell Farm and
Malvikaa’s challenging journey of discovery, both within
and without, can be viewed at https://swayyam.org/

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