Tilling together

Farmer-producer organisations could fix many problems that ail India's fragmented agriculture sector

- NACHIKET KELKAR

Pushkar, in Rajasthan, is a popular tourist destination. It is also known for its roses. Some 700 hectares in the region are dedicated for rose cultivation. The flowers are mostly exported.

Though Pushkar gives the highest per-hectare yield of roses in the country, the farmers' earnings were limited because of the highly fragmented land holding in the area. In 2015, Nand Kishor Saini decided to fix it. He brought together all the rose farmers in the region and set up a farmer-producer organisation (FPO), Pushkar Rural Agricultural Youth and Employment Producer Company (PRAYE). It started with 260 shareholders, and now has 500 shareholders and 350 unregistered members. The company has facilities where the produce is processed into value-added products like gulkand (a sweet preserve of rose petals), rose water, rose syrup and dehydrated rose petals. These products are sold under the brand Pushkarwala.

PRAYE collects 500-600kg pink roses a day. "Before the formation of the company, an individual rose farmer got 50 a kilogram for the crop. Now, he gets more than 65," said Saini. Last financial year, PRAYE's revenue topped *1 crore.

The synergy helps in every aspect from fetching better yield to extracting higher price for the produce, as Anita Malge, who runs Yashaswini Agro Producer Company in Solapur, Maharashtra, affirms. "We started with a small group of 10 people," she said. "We collectively bought seeds and agri chemical, and started cultivating together." Started in 2015, the company's goal is improving the lives of women farmers in the district. Today, it has more than 1,400 women shareholders from 32 villages.