Regenerative farming can deliver measurable resilience against erratic rainfall and rising temperatures, according to The Hindu BusinessLine, citing the experience of Beforest, a regenerative land restoration initiative founded in 2018. The company has built six collectives across Kodagu, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bhopal, centred on diverse agroforestry rather than single-crop production.
A 1,300-acre collective model
According to Sunith Reddy, Founder and CEO of Beforest Lifestyle Solutions, a collective is a group of people bound by a shared commitment to regenerative living who co-own and co-manage a single landscape, with a minimum land requirement of about 100 acres. "The integrated ecological systems we build (lakes, check dams, food forests, wilderness and wildlife corridors) simply can't function on a smaller base," he said. Members own their private plots but share stewardship of the larger landscape. The collective's built-up footprint is capped at 15 per cent of the land, so the ecology remains intact.
The first collective, Poomaale 1.0, took physical form in 2019 in Kakkabe, Kodagu, where Beforest began rewilding an abandoned coffee estate into a coffee forest, involving 50 families. The initiative has since expanded:
| Collective | Location | Families / members | Additional capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poomaale 1.0 | Kakkabe, Kodagu | 50 families | — |
| Hyderabad Collective | Hyderabad | 82 families | — |
| Poomaale 2.0 | Kodagu | 24 families | Scope for 11 more |
| Mumbai Collective | Mumbai | 33 families | Scope for another 10 |
| Hammiyala | Kodagu | 5 members | — |
| Bhopal Collective | Bhopal | 2 members | — |
In all, six collectives have been built on around 1,300 acres with 196 members across them, according to The Hindu BusinessLine.
Diversified production buffers against crop failure
Many neighbouring farms depend on a single crop, so if the weather, a pest, a disease or the market turns against that one crop, the whole livelihood takes a hit, Reddy told businessline. Beforest's landscapes are built the opposite way, with diverse agroforestry systems, perennial fruit trees, timber, spices, fodder, and more, so risk is spread across many crops with different harvest windows and different vulnerabilities.
"When one has a weak year, others carry the season. That single design choice is the biggest resilience difference between us and a conventional mono-culture next door," he said.
At least half of every collective is left as nature zones, "our way of sharing the land fairly with the other species that live on it," with the rest zoned for production, Reddy said. Every site is designed around what naturally belongs there rather than imposing a fixed cropping model.
Water capture and perennials anchor the system
Water is a fundamental need, especially in the drier areas of Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Mumbai. Beforest captures, stores, and recharges water across the whole landscape through ponds, lakes, water-harvesting structures, and groundwater recharge. This improves the land's capacity to absorb and retain rainfall. "So when rainfall is erratic, we're drawing on reserves we've built into the site, not chasing a falling water table," he said.
Perennial trees and shrubs tie the system together: they put down deeper roots, need fewer inputs as they mature, and cope far better with swings in rain and temperature. Over time, they build soil organic matter and vegetation cover, so the land holds moisture better and every drop of water does more work. A landscape like that is simply less exposed to a bad year than a field of annuals, according to Reddy.
Implications for agricultural supply chains
Asked whether the regenerative landscapes have proved more resilient than neighbouring conventional farms at a time of erratic rainfall and rising temperatures, Reddy replied in the affirmative. For commodity buyers and procurement teams, the model points to diversified agroforestry as a supply-side buffer against weather, pest, disease, and market shocks that typically hit monoculture sources.
The Poomaale 1.0 site, which turned an abandoned coffee estate into a coffee forest involving 50 families, shows how degraded farmland can be returned to productive use. Crops vary from collective to collective because every landscape has its own climate, soil, and ecology, so the production mix is site-specific. The resilience logic — multiple crops, different harvest windows, and built-in water reserves — directly addresses the supply volatility seen across tropical agricultural markets.
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