In 2008, 38-year-old Aiyanna Gowda took over his father’s farmland in Yeddaldoddi (Sindhnur taluk), Raichur—about 470km from Bengaluru. Though his family had cultivated paddy for decades, Gowda had new ideas after he met award winning agriculturist Subhash Palekar, who has popularized a “zero budget spiritual farming” technique, where production cost is nil and no outside elements are added to the plant.