10 inspiring farmers’ stories to wish you a very happy harvest festival

Today you may be drinking sugar cane for Pongal, eating Gajak for Lohri, or offering prapatti for Makara Sankranthi. Wherever you are celebrating your harvest festival, we want it to be a very prosperous and lucky one. As a little gift from the Your Story team, we want to share 10 powerful stories which have had an impact on the Indian farming sector.

• HOSACHIGURU, otherwise known as ‘the enterprise that grows on trees’, is run by four former engineers who envisioned next-generation farmers in corporate managers, doctors, lawyers, and businessmen. These provide investments to turn unused fields into lands where to grow crops and Hosachiguru makes sure they become productive.
• Santhosh D. Singh is an ITian who left the comfort zone of his corporate job after working for Dell and America Online, and found out how to spend more time in close contact to nature and at the same time earn money.
• eFarm collects data about what their pool of farmers produce as well as about the customers’ demand and match supply and demand using simple IT-driven order matching system to maximize the potential of farming market. They effectively managed to improve farmers’ income and won the IIM-Kozhikode Whiteknight business plan contest in 2009
• Bhosale Lab has developed solutions to connect 30k farmers and enabling them to share information, alerts and advice.
• CSIR-CFTRI started its story with the blessing of a princess. It is one of the most prominent food research centres in India and it is actively working to improve farmers’ economic situations. They aim to provide them with technology and solutions to bypass middlemen and make them ‘farmpreneurs’.
• Mushroom Development Foundation is leveraging the increasing demand of mushrooms in India to help north eastern communities to benefit from the commerce of the fungi.
• Daksh Farm provides an m-commerce platform that allows farmers to sell their products online. They sell mainly matta rice and deliver both through India Post and Flipkart. Inquires for their products come from as far as USA and Canada!
• Ecofarms has helped more than 15’000 farmers in 75 villages to come out of poverty and is planning to keep increasing their reach.
• Camel Organic works to promote organic farming through farmers and consumers focusing also on the international market in USA and Europe.
• FrontalRain, MITRA, Eruvaka are three of the most interesting companies in food-supply chain, horticulture and agriculture that are making a mark in India