Farm Fresh
Manish More used to grow sugarcane and onions on his four acre farm in Shiroli Khurd village, 80 km from Pune, until a few years ago. But with sugarcane yields falling from 100 tonnes an acre to 40 tonnes, he, Ganesh Hande, Pravin More, and a dozen other farmers formed an informal group in 2014 and switched to more remunerative organic vegetables only to realise that taking their crop to market was a hard row to hoe.
"Government officials will tell you to go organic but they won't show you how. And the problem was we had no idea where to sell and how to value add", says Manish. Till a chance encounter in 2015, agritech player FarmLink changed their fortunes.
Now each week, their 30 strong group supplies two to four tonnes of organic fruits and vegetables such as onions and beetroot to FarmLink's distribution centre at Vashi in Navi Mumbai, from where the latter supplies to customers like Amazon Now, Vista and Star Bazaar.
"FarmLink has given us a plan to sow our crops. We allot one two crops per farmer and they farm in a chain so we can supply the vegetable all year round," says Ganesh, who gets the produce sorted, graded, and packed on his farm, while Pravin transports it to Vashi. More importantly, their incomes have nearly quadrupled in the last two years. So, Manish, who is the lead farmer aggregator, has bought five cows while Pravin has a new pick up and Ganesh is considering schooling his daughter in Pune.
Cut to MRC Nagar village near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu, where 27 year old Santhosh Kumar grows exotic vegetables like broccoli on his 10 acre farm. Until 18 months ago, Santhosh would rely on a relative to take his produce to the mandi in Ooty with little transparency on the price and quantity sold. But after tying up with Chennai based WayCool Foods and Products, field officers grade and weigh his produce at his farm and a truck from its Ooty collection centre collects it on a sourcing run covering 500 odd farmers along the way.
And while earlier, Santhosh would
