Bhaskar Save

Bhaskar Hiraji Save, born January 27, 1922, in the coastal village of Dehri in Gujarat's Valsad district, and died October 24, 2015, was an Indian farmer, educator and environmental activist often called the Guru of Sustainable Agriculture. After teaching for ten years he turned to farming in the 1950s, initially using chemical fertilizers before abandoning them by 1960 in favor of an integrated polyculture system combining coconut and chikoo trees intercropped with vegetables and grains. His platform and trench irrigation system for fruit trees, which emphasized water conservation and soil fertility through natural methods, was recognized by the United Nations in 2001 as one of the most important orchard production systems in the world.