The initiative aims to encourage women and youth entrepreneurs to set up biochar units, produce biochar, and distribute it to farmers as part of a rural business model.
Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister, Road, Transport & Highways formally inaugurated a new Biochar Centre of Excellence at Kanha Shanti Vanam, the global headquarters of the Heartfulness Institute located near Hyderabad. The initiative has been developed in partnership with PayPal. The centre aims to train village-based entrepreneurs in sustainable farming and rural enterprise using biochar techniques.
The Centre has been established to provide skill development, and capacity building for rural entrepreneurs in villages for biochar. The initiative aims to encourage women and youth entrepreneurs to set up biochar units, produce biochar, and distribute it to farmers as part of a rural business model. The Centre of Excellence will also offer an end-to-end experience of how biochar is produced, processed, and applied to the soil, enabling participants to visually study and understand its impact on crops, soil, and forests.
Gadkari addressed the gathering with a message focused on agricultural reform and inclusive rural growth. “Our farmer communities need tools and platforms that work for their soil, their weather, and their village economy. This collaboration is about practical knowledge. Biochar is not just a product. It is a way to rethink farming so that we don’t damage the land while trying to grow from it,” he said.
The training curriculum at the new facility is entirely hands-on. Trainees walk through the biochar process using field-scale demonstration pits and work with instructors to apply the resulting material to test plots. The goal is to teach participants how soil quality, crop yield, and water usage respond to biochar in real conditions. It also covers how to market biochar locally, including cost, volume, and transport models that have already worked at the pilot stage in Telangana.
The centre’s programs will run year-round and are structured in cohorts. Instructors come from agro-forestry backgrounds and include members of the Heartfulness ‘Forests by Heartfulness’ (FBH) unit. The facility is connected to FBH’s larger reforestation program, which is working toward planting 30 million trees using native species by 2030.
Farmers from Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat who participated in early trials of biochar shared their experiences at the event. One cotton farmer, who applied the method in the previous season, reported a 27% increase in yield and noted that water usage had decreased due to the improved soil structure. Another participant from Gujarat highlighted fewer pest issues and better early germination rates.
Kanha Shanti Vanam has already used this process across 200 acres of land that was previously uncultivable. The enriched plots now host medicinal gardens, native flowering trees, and herbal plantations. Birds and reptiles that disappeared decades ago have returned, and the area has begun to attract botany students from agricultural colleges in South India. The Centre of Excellence is expected to serve as a template for replication. Talks are underway with institutions in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu to establish similar facilities. Heartfulness has also opened discussions with agriculture extension officers in three states to integrate biochar modules into state-run rural skilling programs
