Best of 2025: 10 Farmers Who Brought New Income, Nutrition & Dignity to Rural India |
Sometimes, change begins with a single act of care. A daughter planting ancient wheat to help her mother heal. A young man leaving the city to give local farmers a more reliable income. Sisters revamping neglected land into a successful farm that nourishes their community. Across India, these moments of compassion and curiosity are reshaping rural life.
In 2025, farming became more than work; it became a way to heal the land, uplift communities, and create opportunities where there were none. These agricultural innovators remind us that the heart of progress often beats in the soil beneath our feet, in the stories of people who saw a problem, felt its weight, and refused to leave it unsolved.
Here are 10 stories of agricultural entrepreneurship rooted in care and sustainability that shaped the way we saw rural innovation in 2025.
The journey that began as a daughter’s hope to ease her mother’s struggle with leukaemia became a region-wide agricultural revival. In 2018, Vaishali planted just two acres of Khapli wheat, an ancient grain rich in fibre, antioxidants and low glycaemic properties. Within a few years, word spread across the region, and today Khapli wheat is cultivated on 1,500 acres, fetching premium prices while enriching soil health.
Vaishali also maintains her family’s banana legacy, along with groundnut, coconut and tur dal cultivation. She holds possibly the first Seed Dealer Licence for Khapli wheat, making sure hundreds of farmers have access to high-quality seeds.
Read her story here.
Shivraj left a secure pharmaceutical career to set up a solar-powered........