Meet Gurunatha Oudugoudar of Kurthkoti village, Gadag district, Karnataka. On his 20- hectare farmland, he sows cotton, chilly, papaya and many kinds of vegetables. Not a mean achievement, considering Gadag is a drought prone district. Oudugoudar owes his success to Sanjeevani, a vermicompost developed by L G Hiregoudar, head of the K H Patil Krishi Vigyan Kendra (khpkvk), Hulkoti, Karnataka.

Gadag's black soil makes moisture retention extremely difficult and the district has an almost 100-year history of droughts. Vermicompost