Our Story

HOW IT ALL STARTED

We, at BeForest, believe that being connected to nature is essential for our well being. The last few decades have been a big divergence from this paradigm. Sustainability has taken a back seat in the interest of aggressive growth. This has resulted in urban centres as the primary drivers of the economy and an ever-increasing urban population that sucks in natural resources from the rural and peri urban zones, rendering them degraded over time. Water and food security have become big issues that have penetrated the basic fabric of society today. We wondered if there is an alternative to this constant struggle to ensure life’s basic needs.

In 2017, we decided to take a holistic look at the problem of both agriculture and how we live, and see if we could devise a framework that drove a society towards economic, ecological and social viability. Can we build a framework to ensure food and water for a community? Can we build value by making the eco-system work for us? BeForest has taken the first steps in answering these questions using principles of natural farming and permaculture. This process would eventually result in a community that lives amidst what we call a food forest – a mixed self sustaining perennial system of food and water that requires no external inputs – True Abundance.

Our Philosophy

WHAT MOTIVATES US

Fundamentally we believe a connection to nature is a must for our well being and at BeForest we are using Farming as the tool to establish that connection.In addition to that, we are very particular about not exploiting the landscape. Instead we wanted to recharge it. we wanted to increase the soil quality, the ground water, the air quality and the bio diversity in the process. We looked at different models of sustainable farming when we came across permaculture and we chose that as our primary medium because essentially what we were trying to do was to grow back a forest.
Right from the start, we were very clear about our collectives being self sustained in terms of water, electricity and food. To get there we have done a lot of optimisations that are very particular to the area. For eg, the housing clusters – the accomodation is all split into multiple clusters that would be located at points where delivering natural resources like water and electricity becomes easy. There very minimal energy loss as the distance is quite less. The material used in establishing this network is quite less as well. This is exactly how our villages were designed – centered around the drinking water source. We are building a modern village and not villas – that sums up our design philosophy.