Women farmers experiment with new urban markets to sell their produce.
Women from the Bharari Sakhi Producer Company launched their vegetable marketing efforts in Solapur city on the occasion of Makar Sankranti on January 14. Women farmers who cultivated organic vegetables moved beyond household vegetable production to form a collective and experiment with new urban markets to sell their produce.
Over the past three years, women farmers from Solapur block have been adopting SSP’s ‘one-acre farming model’. However, a major challenge they faced was the inability to negotiate a fair and viable price for their products from intermediaries who visited their villages.
SSP organised meetings with Sakhi leaders and told them about the benefits of starting a Farmer Producers Company – which include marketing support at a larger scale, distribution of profits to company members and a fair price for farmer’s produce.
In 2020, five hundred women farmers from Solapur block finally came together to form the Bharari Sakhi Producer Company. Leaders who had been working with SSP took a lead in connecting small farmers to the Company. Further, ten women farmers who were recognised as empowered leaders were selected as Board members of the Producer Company. To support the Company, SSP also provided women with training on processing, packaging, marketing their produce and financial management.
Receiving an overwhelming positive response, they organised a pilot effort to sell their vegetables in the city by taking pre-orders from these officials and reached out to twenty villages for vegetable collection. Mangal Dhumal, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Producer Company, says, “our initial efforts were very successful, and many customers asked us to return and sell our vegetables on a weekly basis. We plan to scale up the number of farmers we are connected to, establish collection centres in multiple villages, and involve more women in the marketing process.”
Swayam Shikshan Prayog
17th January, 2022