Prakheti is a small collective working alongside farmers across the Western Ghats and beyond. We help conserve indigenous seeds, practise natural farming together, and support the kind of community strength that lasts beyond a single season.
Communities and landscapes we're rooted with
Prakheti started when two people began volunteering on farms and at research institutes across South India. They spent time listening to the challenges farmers were carrying, often on their own. That habit of listening first is still how we begin every new relationship today.
Now more than 5,000 farmers across Kerala are part of this community. Together we care for a living seed bank of over 450 indigenous crop varieties, and we work in the Western Ghats, a place rich in biodiversity, to help native species that are struggling against chemical-heavy farming find room to grow again.
Our name comes from two words: प्राकृतिक (Prakritik, natural) and खेती (Kheti, farming). It's simply what we do, and how we try to do it.
Read Our Story
These are the commitments that shape our work: to seeds, to soil, to the people who care for both, and to the generations who'll inherit them.
We conserve and freely share more than 450 indigenous crop varieties with farmers. Farming has narrowed down to a handful of hybrid and store-bought seeds over the years, and we're trying to help bring some of that variety back.
We grow food and learn alongside farmers, using chemical-free, low-input methods that come from local knowledge, practised together, season after season.
In the Western Ghats, we help restore native species through small forests and butterfly habitats, on land that heavy farming has pushed to the edges.
We support farmer groups in finding fairer routes to market, so the risk of a bad season doesn't fall on one family alone.
We run workshops and hands-on training for young people who want to learn agroecology, and we try to tell this story together with the people living it.
"The Western Ghats is losing native species to forest clearing and heavy farming. We can't undo that on our own. But alongside the farmers and families who still live on this land, we can help what's left keep growing."On working in the Western Ghats
Every plot here started as a relationship. We built each one with farmers, seed keepers and land stewards, one season at a time.
Sanctity Ferme Ventures (Tamil Nadu) and our Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh) field work are part of this story too. There's more to come, as we document it together with the communities involved.
The people who care for this land carry generations of knowledge. We try to spend more time listening than writing, and when we do share a story, we try to share it the way it was told to us.
Documenting traditional practices and seed-saving knowledge with a farmer in Shoolagiri, Tamil Nadu.
Field Visit
Walking an areca and spice forest garden with a farmer elder, learning how generations-old polyculture holds a hillside together.
Field Visit