Farming, one of the oldest occupations in the world is seeing a sudden influx of new blood, as quintissential urban professionals throw away lucrative careers and seek to bring in new answers to very old questions-
CHENNAI: The world is changing constantly and so is the one of the oldest professions in the world, the foundation of civilisation — farming. With the world’s population rapidly increasing and the need for food is too. So much is the opportunity inherent in the agriculture sector that even the urban ‘elite’ is not shying away from trying its hand at farming. And interestingly, it is entrepreneurs who are giving up lucrative jobs in highly professional fields to try to begin farming focused businesses.
N Balasubramium worked with the National Dairy Development board to establish a new category of Safal Peas in the market at a time when frozen peas were not accepted in India and farmers struggled to maintain quality while securing good margins. While he helped change prevelant trends in consumption he also got an insight into the struggles of the farmer. The perspective prompted him to set up new and unique categories in the market with brands like Tropicana, Real Good chicken and Pedigree.
Meanwhile the talk about organic foods had just begun, he quit his lucrative job in 2006 and joined 24 Organic Mantra. 24 Mantra is cultivating in 1,70,000 acres with a farmer base of 32,000 across India.
Organic farming has been practised in India for decades now. With increasing awareness levels and demand, many players have come onboard and corporates are tapping this demand.
“Organic as a term has already become anonymous with the term ‘expensive’,” said Bhairavi Madhusudan, co-founder and Idea Cultivator at back2basics. With organic produce, she says, there are six to seven middlemen through whom produce changes hands. “But, here, I am the actual producer and the produce reaches the end consumer without involving any middlemen,” she points out.
Loopholes are aplenty both from the consumer’s perspective and from that of a retailer. A layman consumer has no idea about the true source of their food, say experts, and retailers are taking advantage of this situation. By spinning romanticised stories, they say, they woo customers. While quite a lot of the new generation of entrepreneurs are taking up farming, it is hardly creating an impact in the sector. Vijay Anand of The Startup Central said that the initiative taken by startups to adopt new ways of farming is actually doing good by modernising farming methods. “Of 1,00,000 people working in Cognizant, if 10 percent of the workforce quit their jobs and join farming we might start looking it as a trend, but currently we see only 7-8 people join farming, which I feel hardly makes an impact,” he pointed out.
The concept of the middlemen can never go away, say experts, because they are the ones who give farmers money upfront before money from customers reaches them. Their role is equally important, experts say. However, agri startups are becoming the new middlemen. The average farmer has long felt that he or she has been exploited by multinationals.
As in the case of Ramesha, who has always been a farmer in his three acre property. Ramesha decided to farm coriander in his land recently. 25 days later, he had a glut of coriander in his land and a pan India chain of grocery stores offered to buy the crop. Ramesha, admitted that he was very happy, but had he calculates the money received and the produce supplied, he would have realised how he has been robbed, he pointed out. The produce that he sold to the middlemen for 69 paise was sold for Rs 18 in the market. According to experts, all these are issues that new age entrepreneurs and startups can solve, if more of them come in — especially with the Indian agricultural sector quite fragmented and disorganised. Transparency is a factor that is nearly unheard of and ground level changes are required to bring a change. Somthing that disruptive startups can do very well.
However, startups in the sector say they have already begun the transformation something that will only increase as more and more enter the field.
Going Agri
Back2basics, also sells its products overseas. Previously, 75 per cent of the revenue came from exports and the balance from the domestic market. Now both markets have equal share
Many other startups started by professional have been slowly entering the sector