My starting a company in agriculture came as a shock to many, and rightfully so. Electrical engineer, Masters in Entrepreneurship, worked on energy focused social enterprises before. So why farming all of a sudden?
For a while I thought that energy was the biggest problem in rural India. But that’s when the only time I had really spent in a village was while driving through it. I was enjoying life in San Francisco and planning a company to deliver cheap and safe drinking water in villages. Relocating back to India was an obvious step to get perspectives from the field. A few months of travelling to various parts of the country and visiting organizations in the development field left me confused on the best approach to catalyze overall rural development – what do we need to do to empower our rural folk so that they take their development in their own hands? Of course education, energy, water, housing are all needed. But what is the best first step, given the current state of things? All sectors need a revolution, but underlying everything is making people financially sustainable. I’ve seen that there is a general consensus among rural families on how they will use the money when they have enough to provide for food and housing. They will educate their kids in good schools, and they will electrify their homes. This is all great. But the financial sustenance isn’t there yet – people are in debt, rely on subsidies, and don't know how to make more money or are not inspired to take extra initiative.
So here’s what I thought – Let’s give people a better source of income first and then make available products and services that will aid in making villages that have all required infrastructure, and make the rural and “mainstream” economies inter-dependent (and we all know that without this the current economic growth can’t sustain itself). I’m in no way trying to say that my thinking and approach is better than other approaches, I’m just outlining my train of thought that led to my decision to start this company. So, back to that train of thought.
I happened to be involved in a small project in agriculture, which is where the epiphony came from. There is a lack of jobs available in our villages, which is why the youth is moving away but still working in the unorganized sector and living in horrible conditions. The major source of income for rural families is agriculture, which is in a pitiful state. Families have small plots of land, and make barely enough to sow seeds and procure inputs for the next sowing season. There generally is a son from the house who is living in a metro in India or has gone to the Gulf and sends home money to get through the months when there is no harvest.
From these observations, I came to the conclusion that agriculture is the best way to make an impact. Minimize input costs on the farm, and maximize revenues. Meaning 1) Reduce the farmer’s dependence on market for seeds, and chemical fertilizers & pesticides, and 2) Efficient market linkages so that the farmer can get a fair price for what he grows. There’s many organizations doing 1), and there’s a fair amount doing 2), but very very few doing both. Doing 1) can give you satisfaction that you’ve contributed to society and doing 2) can make you money. But if you’re thinking impact, both need to go hand in hand. The good news is that there is a growing market for and awareness about organically grown food. The rich guys will pay for it. It’s just about making that money trickle down to the farmer as efficiently as possible. There are also many problems associated with climate change we address if we are successful. Basically, opportunities abound. The bigger challenge is changing the way a farmer farms. It’s the biggest risk his family can take.
So why did I start Jagriti Agro Tech? To create a model that makes it easy to convince a small farmer to adopt sustainable farming. What do I mean by sustainable farming? Inputs required are made on or close to the farm minimizing the input cost. Buying organic manure and medicines manufactured by corporations beats the purpose.
I’ll get into more detail about our model in another post, but for the last 3 months we’ve set up a demo farm where we are showcasing growing vegetable and rice organically. There is tremendous response from the farmers, and there is a lot of buzz around our farm. Hopefully, by the time of harvest we have results that are good enough to at least get farmers to start thinking about adopting similar farming techniques!
Below is a pic of the farm that was taken today. Comments, feedback, critique are all invited. Please get in touch with me if you want to contribute in any way. A shout out to any organic agriculture gurus that might stumble upon this – we need your help! My email address is [first_name][last_name]@gmail.com.
Ashmeet Kapoor
