The keeper of the red grain

December 15, 2025

P. Narayanan Unny, the farmer and conservationist who rescued Kerala’s rare medicinal rice Navara from near extinction, passed away on December 9 at his ancestral home in Karukamanikalam, Chittur. He was 67. With his passing ends a quiet but extraordinary chapter in Kerala’s agricultural history, one shaped by patience, conviction, and an almost reverential relationship with the soil.
Unny’s life work revolved around a single grain. Navara, a two-thousand-year-old rice variety revered in Ayurveda, had all but vanished by the 1990s. Low yields, labour-intensive cultivation, and the spread of hybrid rice had pushed it to the margins. Even agricultural research stations no longer held pure seeds. What survived was memory, not cultivation.

When Unny returned to Chittur in the mid-1990s after his father’s death, he was leaving behind a stable career in marketing and the computer industry. The family’s 125-year-old farm had declined, and Palakkad’s agricultural landscape had shifted toward commercial hybrids. Instead of following that path, he chose restoration. His first task was simply to find pure Navara seeds. After years of searching, he gathered a handful of grains and planted them on a small patch of land. Many failed. A few survived. Season by season, he saved and refined those grains until a viable stock emerged.

From that fragile beginning grew the largest Navara cultivation area in Kerala. His twelve-acre farm became a living experiment in traditional agriculture. Chemical inputs were avoided entirely, as Navara’s medicinal use demanded purity. Pest control relied on neem mixtures, companion planting, and, famously, workers sweeping the fields daily with butterfly nets. It was painstaking work, but it succeeded.

Over time, the Navara Eco Farm evolved into a hub of biodiversity and learning. Birds, insects, and small animals returned. Students, scientists, chefs, and conservationists came to understand what careful farming could achieve. Unny also worked to secure a Geographical Indication tag for Navara, giving the grain legal protection and renewed identity.
His efforts earned national and international recognition, but Unny remained grounded in the field. He believed native grains were not relics of the past but answers for a future facing climate stress and nutritional loss.
P. Narayanan Unny has left the fields of Chittur, but the red grain he revived continues to grow, carrying his legacy in every harvest.