inputs and unnecessary inputs for ourselves, while the results are inferior and more expensive in every way." The concept and practice of Natural Farming was pioneered by Masanobu Fukuoka of Japan, who visited Save at his Kalpavruksh farm in 1997 as a special guest to commemorate India's 50 years of independence led by Mahatma Gandhi. While both men depended on tree crops for the sustainability of their farms, Save organized his own vision of natural farming far more aggressively around the active irrigation of his tree crops, supplemented by grains, vegetables, and livestock. Save is credited with pioneering the platform and trench system to provide water to his tree crops storing moisture in the soil year round. In the beginning, in order to sustain his farm until the long-life fruit trees matured and yielded value, he integrated short, medium and long-life plant species into his early scheme to rapidly establish complete ground cover and optimize yield. Briefly, Save's polyculture plant categories and natural farming philosophy are based on this pattern: Short-life span crops, which refer to annual vegetables, grains, herbs, annual flowers. Medium-life span edible crops, which include flowers, grains, grasses and fruit trees. Long-life span crops, which are perennial vegetables, such as rhubarb, horseradish, asparagus; perennial herbs, some alliums (leeks, chives, garlic), some members of the Brassica family (collards and kale); and bramble fruits (raspberry, blueberry, and blackberry), nut trees (filbert, chestnut, almond, or pecan), fruit trees (kalpavriksha, chikoo, and coconut), and some grasses, like alfalfa. Save's idea for platforms resulted from a need to grow trees on low-lying paddy fields. To elevate the land, he constructed raised earthen mounds or berms and was then able to plant his saplings. Initially, he simply broaden the berms between his rice plots, depending solely on the monsoon rains for moisture. Later, he was granted permission by the village panchayat to excavate at his own expense a village pond on some uncultivated common land near his farm. The soil that was dug out – as the pond was gradually enlarged and deepened each year – further served to elevate and expand his "platforms" for the trees. Initially, the saplings of coconut or chikoo (long life-span species) were intercropped only with vegetables (short life-span species). Later, Bhaskar Save integrated other crops like bananas and papayas (medium life-span) among his chikoos and coconuts – to optimize the use of the available sunlight until the