Starting to write this has been the most difficult part. The issues lingering around right now have been one of the most challenging ones. All my life; until I realized that after one turns 26, life moves on without brakes, I had to throw myself into situations to derive a better world view. And in the process of mindless, directionless stints, I ended up tangling up myself into a number of real situations. I am 32 now and when I look back, there are hundreds of things that I would have done differently. Nevertheless the learnings it has provided and the space it has put me in right now is something that I would like to build upon for the rest of my life. I ask myself, sometimes, whether I have the energy to start afresh and pause, in search of an inner calling. It has never come yet. So, I decided to persevere on what I have right now and not think too much. On that front, “I am interested in contributing my working life to the betterment of the farmers and the allied rural ecosystem”. Three years back, I would have made the last statement, thumping my chest and shouting out loud. Now, I say the same statement, but only to myself and with a little caution and hesitancy. In the fight between ‘blind confidence’ and ‘clarity’, within me, ‘blind confidence’ seems to have figured that it is a losing game for it. Clarity has emerged a clear winner, but I have layers and layers of worldview to be uncovered, before I embrace it in full measure.
I will try not to make this a rant, but a general discussion I am trying to have with a virtual myself, sitting under a banyan tree in a village. Having the luxury of imagination on my side, I will consider us having just finished a nice mudde bassaru (ragi ball with flavored rasam made out of Lentils and Dill leaves) for lunch, tying my dhoti up and be wearing just a vest, I shall come and sit on the bench under the banyan tree, alongside a mud road (occasionally run over by the tractors carrying agri implements), now wet due to the onset of early monsoon and busy farmers carrying fertilizers and various other inputs to their farms. And just as I am able to start the conversation; after having very patiently chewed and swallowed the betel leaf and areca nut with a hint of limestone, I settle down for a quick nap. Do not think my imagination is hinting at laziness in a village. The village is active by 4.30AM and sometimes at 3.30AM if the power picks up to the motor in the farm for irrigation, and by when the farmers are out setting out their irrigation activities. By lunch time a majority of the work at the farm level is complete. For the amount of physical effort that would have gone in that fragmented small piece of land where mechanization does not justify unit economics, and labor is scarce and costly, a nap after a very simple but a sumptuous lunch is inevitable and in every moral right of the farmer. But, in my imagination, I am just getting a feel for it. I am in reality and in imagination, inherently lazy. But not the farmers.
Okay, moving on from this before my indulgence beats my own interest to share a few things here. The image of a farmer’s life to be as physically intense as one can imagine, as emotionally depressing as one can imagine and financially extremely difficult, is all true and not true at the same time. The thing with the farmers in our country is that, we have always had the outlook of one or the other forms of cooperative as a model to bring prosperity to the lives of farmers. I would like to reflect upon that first. There are approximately 100 to 150 million farmers in our country. Just to put this in the right scale and perspective for the reader, I have tried to churn out some inferences out of the data that we have. Out of the 157 million hectares of cultivable land in the country, 11% of it was not sown (*Ref 01). And out of what was sown, only 36% of the land was used to cultivate twice or more. You can then imagine 64% of all the land that was cultivated in a year was rainfed. Or the farmers did not have the capacity to derive enough cash flow out of one season to sustain for the next. It can be any other reason as well. The complexities in decisions at farm level is pretty huge. So when one has to look at a more ecosystem level, one tries to derive the generic metrics out and try to standardize effort. And therefore the cooperative model is a natural choice of aggregating farmers to provide services of inputs, credit, marketing and other value added services.
I am starting to think now, if my startup Directsubzi (currently not operational), had a learning curve on a timeline that was acceptable for business to survive, I would have had a different narrative right now. Well, it was only after a year starting Directsubzi, I got to know about the existence of a cooperative model which was then getting stage as Farmer Producer Organizations. With such penetration into field knowledge even after a year and half of incorporation, it is not easy to figure out the areas that lead to shutdown. However, being conscious of the fact that I don't indulge too much into my glorious failed past, we will try to look at the life of people who put food onto our plate, not from a socio-cultural perspective, but from a livelihood business standpoint.
It is my biggest realization in life yet on the fact that farmers and food deserve the respect of the highest level. The big image of a farmer wearing a soiled and torn dhoti squatting on a dry land seriously lacking water, looking hopelessly at the sky for rains had dawned on me so much in curating my perspective about farmers and rural life. It is only until I got involved with a few of them to really understand that, the story that the image puts out is true in every sense, but there are other stories as well. Now, that was a pleasant surprise.
Having to now ponder about how what's grown in the village reaches our kitchen was very fascinating to me. And to have understood that only 25% of what we pay to the vegetable vendor actually reaches back to the farmer at best, got me thinking. Got me start a company to increase that 25% to anywhere between 40% to 60%. It is amazing how many things in life we take for granted. Not just my earlier startup, there are all a whole lot of online apps that encapsulate the idea of vegetables just landing on the door, by pressing a few buttons on the phone. And that is why one tends to fall back on the convenience that these startups provide, and forget the real deal in an effort to respect the process and science behind cultivation of vegetables and production of other crops that are either consumed directly or after processing. I don't mean and intend to mention that only farmers growing vegetables are affected or are in focus. It took me a while to understand the fact that the issues surrounding farmers can basically be grouped into two strata; one is that of the geography and the other is that of the commodity the farmer grows. So when I mention farmers here in a generic sense, it covers farmers of all types. The challenges surrounding a micro dairy farmer is another thing completely. So, as it may sound wage and too open ended, that is what the situation on ground looks like.
The simple fact that the disruptions in rain and a slight miscalculation in its prediction will change the life of a farmer to good or bad. It is that simple to keep taking the wrong step. Most of us think that farming is for the illiterate. The profound science that it is, has been relevant for ages. And the farming community as a pass on from one generation to another, has beautifully kept it alive.
I am aware of being all over the place right now with respect to sharing information about what is with the farmers and the villages they reside in. It is not all issues. It is not all happy. It is not all raining. It is in some places all drought. The villages have the internet. Farmers are connected. I want to bring to light the various situations of our farmers in real.
We will discuss real time operational issues. We will discuss policy. We will discuss the real time financial situation of the farmers, on how credit plays a major role in the life of farmers. We will discuss a lot of case studies, like how a cotton seed manufacturing company and its various traders have taken the lives of these farmers at their mercy or how the millet millers from one state are killing competition and motivation of millet growers from another. Well even how covid has impacted the lives of farmers right now and does that have a standing impact on how we consume. We will also look at livelihood at large where we touch upon the stories of a lot of small and micro scale rural enterprises. And how Amazons and Walmarts of the world need to adapt, so does the business, in an attempt to penetrate and grow accordingly. We will also discuss startups.
I am no business expert. I am currently a failed entrepreneur, but I have a vision that isn’t tampered still. Although it is all over the place, fuzzy at times, I cannot deny its existence. Fire shall be lit soon, until then, I will share all that I have learnt with you all. You may think I am using you all to read through my opinions and stories, which quite frankly, I don’t even know who my target audience should be at this point. However as it may be, rather as it is, a desperate attempt to gather my thoughts in one place and have a better view at things, if in the process I am able to share a few insights into what affects everyone directly or indirectly, I place my effort around this blog quite important.
Let us break this whole thing apart into a series of discussions that we can all do. I will try to set up platforms for random people to be invited for a discussion/ debate with me on matters I have so vaguely mentioned above. Some of the articles I will publish myself. Some of it will be an opinion debate. We will do podcasts with experts from the field, with people who aren't aware of the sector but are interested to know about this space. We will invite entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs to also share their opinions and put out their questions and feedback.
Is this going to be a platform for advocacy and activism against the policies drafted or/and executed? No. I am not moving away from it due to a fear of potential prosecution, I am just more interested in deriving immediate solutions or pathways to solutions for real time challenges. I accept the policy umbrella in which we all should perform and do our best, and leave the questioning of it for others who are far more good at it and well networked to see the good happen. But this will be developed as a general opinion aggregator. I do not like to influence opinions, unless they are driven by facts and inference by the virtue of one’s own analytical capability. It is exciting to be investigative into matters, but I shall do my best at that as well.
I will start, and will do so keeping my judgments on what my fellow readers would know of this space aside. 'I know nothing', may not be true. I know little. And out of that I clearly know how one fails in this sector. Not necessarily how one succeeds. But hey, what's the fun if one knows how to succeed already. So, let us start.
REFERENCES:
- https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/nabard-farmers-india-protest-agriculture-sector-7279331/
- http://sfacindia.com/FPOS.aspx - Generic Information about Farmer Producer Organizations
- http://sfacindia.com/UploadFile/Statistics/Farmer%20Producer%20Organizations%20Scheme.pdf - Policy and Process Guidelines for Farmer Producer Organizations
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