Start of a new decade of Agri-Tourism at Chiguru Farm

This Jan 2026, we have embarked on the journey into a new decade in Agri-Tourism at Chiguru Farm. Yes, we launched Agri-Tourism on 1st Jan 2016 although the farm was started in 2012 and we are proud of what we achieved in a decade. I am late by six months to write this post and some of the contents in this might be repetition of what I had written earlier. 

Chiguru Farm, being a pioneer in Agri-Tourism in Karnataka, has managed to create a buzz around Bangalore through unique initiatives as daytrips, camps, overnight stays, star gazing events, mindfulness retreats, work-from-farm, foraging-and-cooking workshops, etc. Our mango-picking event remains the hot favorite as we were the first to start such an event in India and for the first time we conducted a few Litchi Picking events in Apr 2026. Schools have started noticing the value-add from our educational farm tours. While many schools keep coming back to us year over year (some of them after trying out other farms), new schools keep getting added every year. In fact some of these school kids are grown up gen-Z's now and they recognize me when they see me even at unexpected places! Many new farms have come up around Chiguru Farm, inspired after visiting our farm and replicating what we are doing in farming. Chiguru Farm has become a well-recognized brand around Bangalore despite us not bothering about publicity and limiting it to word-of-mouth only. 

Our main objective of Agri-Tourism has been to educate kids and families about farming and make them understand where their food comes from. Sprinkle a little bit of fun, activities and games to keep the people engaged, or else this can get boring. But we make sure that the focus on education is not lost. That is why we always take our visitors on a farm tour even if their purpose of their visit is something else like star gazing etc. Of course, the freshly prepared authentic local food has its own charm.  We insist on our guests to trace the roots of at least one of their staples after going back home and find out where it comes from and how it is grown. This will be life-changing. We also insist on our guests to slow down their lives as long as they are in the farm and soak into greenery.  It is very interesting to note that most of the guests visit the farm for a different experience instead of simply visiting another place. Many of them are repeat customers as they love the experience. People have started realizing that it is more important to focus on "experiences" instead of "places" during travel and that is why they have started experimenting with different types of travel. It is worth noting that 40% of our guests now are repeat visitors. 

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime".

This is one of my favorite travel quotes. I understand the context and the broad category of it and I completely agree with it. But my experience in Agri-tourism, being on the "other side" of "travel" has some times made me wonder how far this is true. I have come across some avid travelers with prejudice and narrow-mindedness and they refuse to budge from it! Take the example of a family which, after discussing in detail about the farm and understanding what to expect there and browsing through our website, says that they didn't have to travel so much to see trees and plants and start negotiating the price at the end of the trip! Or take the example of a teacher who offers gratuitous but naive advise that Indian farmers should follow the Israeli model without knowing the ground realities and differences. There also people who are happy to take away farm produce as freebies, without even asking permission. Some others come and start asking "where is the TV", "where is the swimming pool", etc. There are others who think that a "farm house" is a gateway to different illegal activities. Many others, mainly corporates ask me whether they can bring food from outside, which I counter by telling that they should rather picnic at Cubbon Park! According to me, farm food is part of the farm experience and refusing to eat it is disrespecting the farm and the farmer. 
There are also people who think that a farmer has a lot of free time or his/her time is not much valuable. I would rather dismiss such experiences as aberrations as most of my experience with Agri-Tourism has been wonderful, cheerful, joyful, memorable and encouraging. 

We step into the new decade with our renewed commitment to continue what we had set out for, with positive impact on nature, environment and sustainable agriculture/living. While we want to touch more people and raise the awareness levels, we are not in a hurry to achieve exponential growth as we are very conscious about the stress on the ecosystem around us caused by  increased number of footprints.  

I am convinced that there is more scope and need for Agri-Tourism centers across Karnataka and the country and I am ready to support any such initiatives to replicate our model (or create their own models). One word of caution for them is that Agri-Tourism ventures cannot sustain for long if they are started with pure commercial interests. However, deep passion towards Agriculture and Tourism can make it commercially successful through persistence over many years. 

About Healthy/Unhealthy food

Of late we are getting bombarded with information on healthy and unhealthy food that we consume. We are regularly being sensitized about the five white poisons - namely, sugar, salt, maida (refined wheat flour), milk and rice. We are also becoming more aware of the problems with refined oils and heat-pressed oils, glutens, and what not? Unfortunately most of the information being shared is either half-truth or half-baked or incomplete, which is leading to a lot of misunderstanding. I will try here to clarify this to a large extent, including the information being shared about the alternatives. 

First thing about the five poisons. 

It is true that white sugar is harmful and the substitutes like jaggery or honey or date-syrup are only marginally better whereas they may also have other intended or unintended side-effects. Main reason for which white sugar is harmful is that the entire process right from growing the sugarcane involves a lot of chemicals and later processing involves more chemicals including chlorine and bleach. Comparatively, jaggery made with organically or naturally grown sugarcane will not have these harmful chemicals and it is also a rich source for fibers, iron and other minerals. However most of the jaggery available in the market is no different from sugar, except in color. Many of them can even be worse than sugar! So blindly replacing sugar with jaggery is not a wise choice. 

Next in line is white salt. There is a lot of debate involving iodized salt, natural sea salt, Himalayan pink salt and many more. While there are concerns about the additives like anti-caking agents and iodine are leaving residues in the body, iodine in particular seems to be necessary evil. Therefore iodized sea salt may be a decent substitute. But in general salt still has the same sodium which shall be taken only as a pinch! 

Now about maida/refined wheat flour. Latest name for this is "all purpose flour" in order to hide the bad reputation of "maida"! The refining process strips the flour from fibers, vitamins and minerals, making it "empty calories". There are already many alternatives in the market based on "whole wheat". While the idea in general is good, lot of these changes are only "cosmetic" and a lot of cheating is happening here. Case in point is the breads available in the market. 

Milk from cows or other animals is one of the most fiercely debated topics mostly between the vegetarians and vegans while I prefer to stay away from that in this article. In the current context, milk, as it is sold in the market has a lot of issues due to the hormones, chemicals and other things used in the dairy industry (apart from the unethical practices). That is why it is considered to be one of the white poisons. A healthy alternative is to source it from a known farmer. It is better if you can make curd/butter/ghee yourself using this milk. 

Fifth white poison is the white rice is mostly starch in a different form and gets absorbed in the blood quickly leading to sugar spikes and also makes you feel hungry quickly. Unpolished or semi-polished rice is definitely a better alternative to this considering the amount of fiber and nutrients. Partially replacing rice with millets also could be a good option.

Lastly about edible oil. The refining process of oil involves a lot of chemicals, apart from the way these oil seeds are grown. These traces in the refined oil are highly harmful for health. There are also other issues like oxidation, trans-fats, omega-6 fatty acids etc with refined and heat-pressed edible oil. But simply replacing them with cold-pressed or virgin oils is not the right way to go. Each of them has its own application and understanding that is very important. Similar to what I mentioned above regarding sugar, blindly replacing refined or heat-pressed oil with cold-pressed or virgin oil is not a wise choice. Apart from the suitability per application, we should also consider where it is sourced from and how the ingredients are grown. 

The bottom line is simple. Consume anything in moderation. Eating 3 spoons of jaggery in place of one spoon of sugar or eating more fried items just because it is fried in cold pressed oil, etc are all strict no no! Informed and wise choices combined with intake in moderation is the way forward.