The Cauvery Calling movement, envisioned by Sadhguru, enabled the plantation of 1.36 crore saplings across 34,000 acres in the Cauvery basin during 2024–25. To date, a total of 12.2 crore saplings have been planted, supporting 2.38 lakh farmers in adopting tree-based agriculture. Remarkably, in the last year alone, 50,931 farmers and citizens actively participated in this large-scale ecological effort.
Cauvery Calling is the world’s largest farmer-driven ecological initiative and a groundbreaking eco-restoration effort with the potential to transform tropical regions. Named Top Innovator by the Trillion Trees: India Challenge, the movement aims to rejuvenate the Cauvery River—a lifeline to 8.4 crore people—while enhancing farmers’ incomes by enabling the plantation of 242 crore trees on private farmland. It promotes tree-based agriculture that helps enrich soil health and improve water retention, in turn helping sustain the river’s year-round flow.
Reflecting on the achievement, Anand Ethirajalu, Project Director of Cauvery Calling and representative of the Save Soil movement, emphasized the urgency of soil regeneration– one of the key objectives of the movement. He said, “One of the key topics that we were campaigning during this COP29 summit of UNFCCC and COP16 of UNCCD is that less than 4 percent of the global climate finance is actually reaching agriculture and food systems.”
“We highlighted this because climate change cannot be fixed in the atmosphere. It can be fixed only in the soil. Putting more focus and investment in soil regeneration through tree-based agriculture is the need of the hour, and that's what we've been doing!”
Providing a large quantity of quality saplings is crucial to achieving the goal of planting over a crore saplings each year. The Cauvery Calling production centres play a vital role in this effort. The production centres include a nursery in Cuddalore, one of the world’s largest single-site nurseries, entirely run by women, with a capacity to produce 85 lakh saplings. Together with the nursery at Thiruvannamalai, which produces 15 lakh saplings, these centres form the backbone of the initiative.
These nurseries supply 40 distribution centres across Tamil Nadu and 10 centres in Karnataka. Together, these nurseries offer 29 high-value timber species, including Teak, Red Sandalwood, Rosewood, and Mahogany at a subsidized rate of Rs. 3 per sapling. The Nursery at Sadhguru Sannidhi Bengaluru also reached a significant milestone of enabling plantation of 1,00,000 saplings since its inception in December 2023. At present, it has enabled the plantation of over 1.3 lakh saplings.
Cauvery Calling is enhancing farmer livelihoods by enabling them to run sapling production and distribution franchises. Farmers are trained and supported to manage nurseries and supply high-quality organic saplings to their communities.
“Currently, 22 farming households run production nurseries and 22 manage distribution franchises. This model enables farmers to earn a stable income while contributing to ecological restoration, making them financially self-reliant,” said Thamizhmaaran, Operations Lead, Cauvery Calling.
Bolstering on-ground support, Cauvery Calling deployed over 160 field executives to visit more than 32,000 farmlands. These executives offer free consultations from pre-plantation to post-plantation, aiming to spread awareness about the benefits of adopting tree-based agriculture. During the visits, the executives check soil type, soil depth and conduct water test and recommend tree species suitable for their respective farmlands. These recommendations are carefully curated after considering the region’s endemic tree varieties, agro-climatic conditions and income-cycle expectations of the farmers.
Cauvery Calling also engages with farmers through Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), NGOs, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, Gram Panchayats, and agricultural expos. Over 52,000 farmers are supported through 225+ active WhatsApp groups that provide real-time advice. A dedicated helpline, operational daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., resolves farmer queries within 24–48 hours using insights from experts and model farmers.
The movement also organized 2 mega training programs and 6 zonal programs in 2024, with 8,721 farmers participating. Experts from prestigious institutions like the National Research Centre for Banana (NRCB), Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM), and Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI) shared practical knowledge about tree-based agriculture.
In 2024, on landmark days such as World Environment Day (June 5), Van Mahotsav Week (July 1–7), Gandhi Jayanti (October 2), and World Soil Day (December 5), etc, 506 plantation events were conducted, resulting in the planting of 10 lakh saplings.
