The vision of Sahyadri Farms began with a challenge: Can we ensure a sustainable model of farming to our small-landholding farmers while also providing safe and quality food to the customers? Can we have a farmer living a life of dignity who is able to provide well to his family, along with having a consumer who is ensured of getting safe and healthy food? Further, we have all witnessed how the rural communities are forced to migrate to urban localities but they fail to find a life of dignity even there as well. So the question is can we imagine a self-sufficient scenario for the rural communities and linking it organically with urban communities and bridging that gap?
It's this singular vision that has been driving me since I completed my education in Agriculture, and gained first-hand experience of the pitfalls and obstacles of farming and rural development over the initial 10 years post-2000. The work began to take a definitive shape in 2010 with the formation of ‘Sahyadri Farmers Producers Company Limited’ or just ‘Sahyadri Farms’ as it’s widely known. We have seen many organisations talk about CSR as one of their activities, but we at Sahyadri Farms, converted the entire organization into a CSR initiative and it became a movement that led us into becoming India’s largest farmer collective!
At Sahyadri Farms, we have built world-class infrastructure and processing facilities that ensure we can work on a sufficiently large scale which is beneficial to both farmers and our consumers. We work hard to ensure that our farmers receive fair equity for their produce by building our entire effort around the values of Trust and Transparency.
The movement was to also develop a first of its kind - branded, traceable product-mix, that would promote sustainable growth. It would cater the best quality food products to our Indian Consumers at fair prices by achieving economies of scale and costs. This movement was driven by a Farmer - Producer model that plays an ever increasing role in the rural economy today, providing gainful employment to a large numbers of farmers and allied resources. The idea is to build crop-specific integrated value chains enabled by technology and efficient management.
It was the formation of a structure, owned by farmers, and with the passage of time has become the farmers ‘best friend’. We live by our motto of ‘Seeding Goodness’ by ensuring that every farmer from our farmer to our consumer gets their fairly deserved returns and food products.