About New Farmer. Two of us, mostly

The story.

In 2011, we started growing food on a small plot in Taleigao, near Panjim. The reason was simple and selfish: the food available in Goa's local markets wasn't particularly trustworthy and we wanted to eat better. What began as a kitchen-garden experiment became an obsession, then a discipline, then a career.

We learned by doing, mostly from mistakes.

Over the years, Yogi Farms expanded from that first plot to larger farms in Taleigao and Santacruz. Later, we renamed ourselves New Farmer: the work had shifted to helping other new farmers.

Today, New Farmer is a mix of teaching, coaching, farming, writing and field-programme work, they all inform each other.

Who we are.

New Farmer is Karan Manral and Yogita Mehra, working out of Goa since 2011. They came into farming together that year and have worked across overlapping but distinct areas since. The simple split below covers most of what each of them does day-to-day.

Karan Manral, coaching, workshops, writing

Came to farming in his thirties after a career in technology marketing and media. Runs the coaching practice and the workshops and writes about Indian agriculture in public, for The Morning Context and on Medium. Mentor on the Farmizen 12-week organic farming bootcamp. Was part of the OFAI team that processed 100+ farmer presentations for OWC 2017.

Yogita Mehra, field programmes, agronomy

A long career in field-level work with farming communities. Led our five-year engagement with the Chorao Island Farmers' Club from TERI's Western Regional Centre, agronomy, the organic-vegetables transition, mechanisation, marketing strategy and farmer engagement across 2011–2015. Heritage crop work on Chorao red-kernel rice and Mancurad mango and on-ground partnerships with NABARD, the Toyota Foundation and TERI.

When we say "we" on this site, we mean New Farmer as a practice. Karan, Yogita or both, depending on the work.

How we think about farming

Start with the business, not the plants. Most new-farm failures are planning or more likely business model failures, not growing failures. Who will buy, at what price, matters before what seed to sow.

Observe before you intervene. Every piece of land has things it wants to tell you, sun, soil, water, wind, what grows unprompted. The work goes faster when you listen first and try to avoid being hasty or imposing pre-conceptions or others' ideas on your farm.

For most of us, there is a deep process of unlearning (how we manage other aspects of life and work) and a process of learning and adapting (to what the context of the farms require).

Some of our farms

A chronological sketch of the farms New Farmer has grown across. Every method we teach on this site has been tested on at least one of these beds first.

2011 · Taleigao

Almeida Farm

A tiny quarter acre plot in Taleigao, Goa. Our first season and the beginning of what became the New Farmer practice. Over the years the soil evolved and this sandy plot became a productive organic farm.

2012 onwards · Santacruz

Pinto Farm

Roughly a hectare in Santacruz. Larger scale, different land, different questions. This mixed farm was part orchard and part paddy field, and the produce included a variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs.

2013 · Taleigao

Gomes Farm

About 1.25 acres on part of a historic family farm in Taleigao. We grew diverse vegetables seasonally and ran a farmers' market called Organic Saturdays in Dona Paula.

The Chorao Farmers' Club field programme.

From 2011 to 2015, Yogita led a five-year engagement with the Chorao Island Farmers' Club, a NABARD-registered collective on the island of Chodan-Madel. The programme, run from TERI's Western Regional Centre with support from the Toyota Foundation, brought heritage rice branding, premium mango programmes, an organic-vegetables transition, paddy revival on khazan land and a working operational backbone to a community of smallholders. In 2009–10, NABARD recognised the Chorao-Madel Farmers' Club as the best-performing of 43 farmers' clubs in Goa; its President was honoured by the Union Agriculture Minister in Delhi.

Karan supported the programme with marketing and communications, including authorship of the announcement and field-note posts on the Club's blog.

Read the full case study →

The OWC 2017 work.

In November 2017, India hosted the 19th Organic World Congress in Greater Noida, for the first time in the Congress's history, the event was built around farmers presenting their own work. Around 700 farmer presentations made up the Farmers' Track.

We were part of the Organic Farming Association of India (OFAI) team assigned to Farmers' PowerPoint Presentation Processing. Within that team, Karan and Yogita worked closely with farmers on all the presentations, turning raw field experience, across languages and formats, into clean decks that could hold up in front of a global audience. More than 100 of those presentations came through their hands.

From the official OWC 2017 credits

Farmers' PowerPoint Presentation Processing

Karan Manral · Yogita Mehra · Ana Mesquita · Savio D'Souza · Shamika Mone · Binita Shah.

We've catalogued 150+ of those presentations here as an open, searchable archive, real farms, real methods, real problems, with attribution intact to the farmers who presented them.

Browse the archive →

Writing, talks and partnerships.

A partial list of publications and programmes we've written for or worked with:

The Morning Context: From Fork to Farm, a 12-part monthly column on Indian agriculture (2021–22)
Medium: long-form essays on organic farming, peri-urban agriculture and food security
Farmizen: mentor on the 12-Week Organic Farming Bootcamp
OFAI: part of the team that processed farmer presentations for Organic World Congress 2017
TERI: programme implementation for the Chorao Island Farmers' Club, 2011–2015
The Toyota Foundation: multi-year funding partner on the Chorao programme
NABARD Goa: institutional partner on the Chorao programme

Two of us, mostly. One practice.