March 17, 2026
Two Kilos of Soil worth Rs 68 Lakh: The Maharashtra Village That Struck Biodiversity Gold
A village now has money to spend on protecting nature
What's happening?
- Dapur is a village near Nashik with a population of ~8,000.
- In 2024, a company ‘Advanced Enzyme Technologies Ltd’ collected soil from the village while searching for microorganisms. They found a bacterium useful for probiotics, from which they made 42 products for commercial use.
- Under India’s biodiversity laws, companies that use biological resources must share profits with the communities connected to those resources.
- And so the company shared back part of the profits — INR 68 lakhs with the Gram Panchayat.
Why should you care?
- It’s a rare example of biodiversity actually getting valued. We always say soil and biodiversity are valuable. But in this case it actually got valued in monetary terms
- The law also says that the funds must be used specifically for biodiversity conservation and sustainable ecological management. And so for the first time, the village has money that it can spend on nature and biodiversity
- This could become a way to incentivise communities to adopt better conservation practices, natural farming etc.