Farmers in Ara (Bhojpur) Report Better Yields After Conservation Work

Bhojpur's gently sloping farmland has been losing topsoil to monsoon runoff for decades. In November 2023 we partnered with twelve smallholder farmers across three villages to implement a low-cost intervention: contour bunding combined with deep-rooted indigenous trees on field margins. Six months later, all twelve farmers report measurable improvements — better moisture retention, fewer rills cutting through their fields, and yield increases between 18% and 32% on the same plots. 'I haven't changed my seed or my fertilizer,' one farmer told us. 'Only the bunds and the trees. And my crop is back.' We are now scaling this model to 40 more acres across Vaishali and Nalanda.