We met Amrinder and his brother Surjit (pictured) in 2025. They are part of a community growing Pusa 1401 Basmati around Rajpura in Punjab state, India. This is the agricultural heartland of India and an area of high water stress, so the brothers were proud to be using low impact farming techniques that will help preserve water resources for future generations.

Jogesh (pictured, left) is one of the Pusa 1401 Basmati growers in a community outside the town of Fatehabad in Haryana state, India. We met during the 2022 harvest. He’s the third generation of his family to be working this land, and the first to adopt sustainable farming practices.

We met growers in the village of Kukrian during the 2025 harvest. The village is near the border with Pakistan in Jammu & Kashmir state. Janak (pictured) and his brother Jeet have neighbouring farms and are the third generation of their family to work this land. They grow Pusa 1121 Basmati as well as sugar cane, pumpkins, and wheat. For lunch, Janak's wife cooked us pumpkin curry, with lemon pickle and the best Basmati rice we’ve ever tasted – all grown on their land.

In 2025 we met with a community of Pusa 1121 Basmati growers around Ranbir Singh Pura in Jammu & Kasmir, India. Sohan (pictured standing) has been farming the land here for more than 50years. He explained how he’s seen a change in the weather in recent years, with monsoonal rains becoming more erratic and extreme. Like many of the growers we met he was proud of his land, proud to be farming to the highest standards of sustainability and adamant that his community produced the best crops in India.