Feeding 50 Million; Building New Food models with Vijay Kumar Thallam

In this episode, we're joined by Vijay Kumar Thallam, a farm leader in the Andhra Pradesh region of India. What does it look like to rely on biology, fermentation, and place-based resources to feed people at scale? This seems to be the million dollar question for folks in regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and so on. Andhra Pradesh is doing it and showing what these systems can look like. Andhra Pradesh addresses this issue by focusing on building women's cooperatives that are organized federationally, which guides food systems in local communities. This episode is a special one that everyone should be listening closely to. Vijay Thallam is Executive Vice Chairman of the Indian non-profit Rythu Sadhikara Samstha, which focuses on organic agriculture; and an advisor on agriculture and cooperation to the state Government of Andhra Pradesh. After 37 years in government, Thallam took that experience to work with large-scale community mobilization and promotion of livelihoods of rural women, tribal communities and farmers. He served a record 10 years as CEO of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty in Andhra Pradesh and led the mobilization and empowerment of 11.5 million rural poor women into thrift and credit based self-help groups, so they could move out of poverty. During the past five years, he has led a movement for climate-resilient, community managed natural farming, also known as Zero Budget Natural Farming. In 2020, it was renamed as Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming. Thallam was appointed as the Vice Chair of the Champions Network for the UN Food Systems Summit.   You can follow their story on Facebook: Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Twitter & Instagram: @APZBNF https://apcnf.in/     To support this podcast, join our patreon for early episode access at www.patreon.com/poorprolesalmanac For more information and updates, visit www.poorproles.com and subscribe to our e-mail list.