A lawyer turned agriculturist, who continues to seek justice for what she stands for in her own unique way – meet Ms Sumeet Kaur of Spudnik Farms.
Ms Sumeet Kaur works on a supply chain model where, apart from encouraging excellent farming practices, she invests into building trust between the consumer and farmer. Community Supported Agriculture is the model she has adopted wherein agriculture and health is made sustainable by regaining the lost connection between farmer and consumer.
Hello and good morning Ms Sumeet Kaur!
Good Morning.
Can we start with a small introduction about yourself and what you do?
I run an organization called Spudnik Farms. Being in the farming sector since 2013, I have recently started working with other small and marginal farmers around the Kolar region. We work with them to provide marketing assistance for their produce, extension services, and assistance in pest and nutrition management. Ultimately, we pick up the produce and supply it directly to households in the city. We have been supplying vegetables since March 2019. Currently, we work with 8 farmers and supply to around 60 families in Bangalore.
Spudnik Farms was part of a one year incubation programme at NSRCEL, IIM-Bangalore. At present, we are in an accelerator programme run by AIC Sangam, and is supported by NITI Aayog. That is what we do, in a nutshell.
Are you native to Bangalore?
I am based out of Bangalore. I am not an agriculturist, academically. By virtue of qualification, I am a lawyer. I graduated from the National Law School, Bangalore. I quit my job as a Tax Advisor in 2012 and got into farming. I started by growing and supplying organic vegetables to friends and acquaintances from a small piece of land at Hoskote. That is when I realized that the agricultural space really interested me although I did not have any technical expertise. Everything I know today, I learnt on the job. It was a little difficult to sustain it financially because I was doing everything from growing the vegetables to delivering it at homes in the city. I realised that to make my work sustainable, I needed to make farming financially viable. Also, there were production issues as well; if you want to supply vegetables continuously I realized that I needed to have more area under cultivation. In that scenario, I worked out that instead of buying more land, I could make a better social impact if I started working with other farmers who may:
need assistance in marketing their produce; and
want to go organic but don't exactly know what to do.
The more I talked to farmers I realised that they are most willing to go organic but in situations like a pest attack or crop disease, if they aren’t provided with the right kind of advice and inputs, they are forced to walk the usual path. So, we go visit these farmers and create a production plan depending on the season, water availability, the type of soil they work on, etc. Through discussions we figure out what kind of crops they would prefer growing. Also, when it comes to organic farming, crop diversity is the key. Hence, we encourage them to grow 3-4 crops on a rotation basis. We provide them with seeds or source it for them. We visit them once a week and observe how their plants fare. If they require assistance with pest, disease or nutrition management, they can reach out to us and depending on the situation we decide on a corrective course of action.
Lastly, we pick up their produce, pack it and do a door-to-door supply.
How big is your organization? Logistics must be quite complicated here, right?
Logistics is just not my area of expertise. It doesn't interest me as well, to be honest. So, we have outsourced logistics. There is a local person who helps us with both the inbound and outbound logistics. I have a team of 5 people, which includes the two people who work on my farm. I have a farm manager who also manages the network of 8 farmers. He is a fairly senior person who has been with me since 2013. Apart from this, we have hired a young agri-professional who helps us create the planting calendars for our farmers and organise the production. To provide a continuous supply of vegetables, you need to have a plan in place. I need to plan everything three months in advance, including things like, ensuring that I have the right seeds that suits the soil type and anticipating the weather conditions. So, in short, I have 5 people and then my own driver. He also doubles up as a packing person and oversees the third party logistics people.
What are some of the challenges with respect to the initiative you have taken up?
Initially, one of the challenges was trying to figure out how to market this produce directly to people in the city. People are used to handpicking things from the local stores - so I wasn't sure how I would get them to buy this concept. When you sell things online, customers don't get to see the produce before buying it. But, experience taught me that if your product is good then word of mouth really picks up. I started with about 15 families. My only advertisement was their word of mouth and now we supply to about 60 families. We sell vegetables on a subscription basis, which is a slightly different methodology.
Can you elaborate on that please?
The customer signs up with us for a month and then whatever we grow that month is sent to the customer on a weekly basis. For example, if we have 4 farmers growing lady fingers and capsicum; we will have four others growing tomatoes and cucumber. Likewise, other vegetables. We gather the produce that all these farmers grow and divide them into baskets which we call weekly baskets. The customer then receives an assorted basket with 8-9 vegetables at their doorstep. We try keeping some preferences in mind. For instance, some people are either allergic or due to some reason do not eat certain vegetables. We make a note of such things upon customer registration. This being a monthly subscription, families can re-subscribe at the end of the month. This system helps sort out our production to a great extent because before the farmer sows the seed they are aware of the quantities they need to grow. When we talk to our customers and take down their preferences, I can estimate the amount of vegetables we need to grow so as to meet needs and keep this sustainable. This way farmers are also in a better position because they don't end up growing too much of one vegetable which they may not end up selling. We don’t have any formal agreements with our farmers which forces them to sell all their produce to us. That is not how we work. We do not aim at contract farming. We are giving them a support window in terms of marketing and technical support as per their need. This works out quite well for everyone involved - farmers can grow 4-5 different vegetables at the same time. This lowers their risk of not being able to recover their cost of cultivation. If the price of one vegetable goes down, they can make it up with the price of another. Hopefully farmers will be willing to expand their area of cultivation. This model helps them avoid the various commissions and rents that they usually deal with. We pick up their produce from their farm making transportation of products also convenient for them. Like I mentioned earlier, we have laid no restriction on them. Even if they have excess produce which was grown for our requirement, they are free to sell it in the local market.
What guarantee does the customer have that there are no chemicals being used while growing the produce?
Neither the farmers that I work with nor I have a certification in place. The beauty of what we do lies in the fact that our customers are free to come and spend time on our farms. They are welcome to come and see what we do. We are extremely transparent and open about how we cultivate the produce. When it comes to small and marginal farmers, a third party certification is something that isn't financially viable. Also, because we cater to the domestic market, certification is not a priority. Certification is a requirement when you want to enter the export market. Most of our customers are not interested in any kind of certifications. Rather, they value the fact that they know who is growing the produce for them. We focus on building trust between the farmers and our customers. That, I believe, is what is required. Today's organic market is so flooded with produce that claims to be organic that we, as consumers, tend to question the certification as well. This is because of lack of trust. So, I focus more on building the trust by keeping it transparent between the customer and the farmer. The more people you can avoid in this chain between farmer and consumer, the closer people are brought together and trust is built. The idea is to have a family farmer just like you have a family doctor. Every family, I believe, should know their source of food. This connection has snapped over time because of the crowd that penetrated into the chain that links farmers and consumers. A farmer in Kolar does not know who is consuming the vegetables he produces and what happens after his food leaves his farm. Similarly the consumer does not know who grows their produce or how and where it is grown. Hence, with this community driven approach, we hope to rebuild the long-eroded sense of trust, reliability and responsibility through personal connections.
How do you take care of pests and crop diseases?
The first thing that helps with pest management and diseases is diversity and crop rotation. These two aspects of farming takes care of a lot of farming issues. we chart out planting calendars for farmers. We try to give them crops that complement each other. For example, we encourage farmers growing tomatoes to plant extra basil in their row of crops. Not only does this result in better flavoured tomatoes, it also provides better pest protection as well. Similarly, we encourage them to have a boundary of garlic or other strong-smelling herbs as per season so that there is a natural pest control mechanism in place. This is a push and pull approach in companion planting. So, during the planning phase, we avoid associating plants that will harm each other or attract insects or pests that are detrimental to other crops. At the second level, we try to get the farmers to use naturally available pesticides. We encourage them to use a lot of fermented plant juices, Jeevamritha etc. In that respect, the agricultural department is doing a commendable job. They have these programmes to train farmers on using different natural potions for pest and nutrition management. Also, there is exchange of a lot of traditional knowledge between farmers. For instance, one of the farmers we work with, Gowramma, is a treasure house of recipes of different fermented plant juices that can be used to control different kinds of pests. She is a national award winning farmer from whom we learn a lot. We share this knowledge with our other farmers as well.
What kind of seeds do you use?
We try using naati seeds as much as possible. We also try to preserve our own seeds because seed autonomy is important to us both from a principle perspective, and also simply because they taste better. Having said that, it is not always possible to find desi seeds because of which at times, we are forced to use the hybrid variety. So, it is a mix of both. We also try procuring seeds from organizations and seed savers. There are many farmers who are well known for saving seeds. We travel and try procuring seeds from various sources.
How do you drive transparency between the consumers and farmers?
Most of the people who were with us when we started off, know me personally. They have come and seen the farm. They trust that I will not give them chemical food marketed as organic. The product speaks for itself. Customers can judge the quality of the produce from the taste and from their own experience after consuming it. There are mothers who come and tell us that their child has begun eating capsicum, for instance, after buying our produce. There are people who have told us that their children have begun eating more greens. You don't need to do much when you build such direct relationships. Like I said, most customers have visited our farms. They see what we do and then, of course, it is their call. I wouldn't want to force anybody to believe that I am doing organic agriculture. It just doesn't work that way.
How do you charge your customers?
We charge a standard monthly fee based on the cultivation charges. Having said that, basically the profit margin is directly related to the cost of cultivation. The closer the cost of cultivation is to zero the more the profit margin. This itself is an inbuilt mechanism for us not to use chemicals, which are expensive. Right now, we pay farmers the market price because that is what they are used to. We are gradually trying to transition them to a stage where they look at their production costs and decide for themselves the price they want to charge for their produce. That is another challenge that we are working on because that calls for a lot of training. , Farmers need to understand this concept. But the basic principle is simple – farmers should be looking at how much it costs for them to grow a vegetable and add their profit margin. The price offered to customers should be your profit margin added to your cost of cultivation. That is how any business runs. This entire concept for the farmers to imbibe will take a little time. We have only been working with them since 2018 and so we are currently giving them a rate of 20-30% more than the market rate. Hence, they are happy. But we are planning to transition them to a stage where they analyse and understand profits.
The challenge there would be that the market price would prove lesser than the cost all summed up, right?
Exactly! That is why we want to get them to a stage where the market price is not a matter of concern at all. They should look at their cultivation cost, add their profit margin and state their selling price. Also, once you start looking at cost of production, a lot of questions about the produce being organic and inorganic gets taken care of, automatically.
What is the basis on which you charge your customers?
We charge them a fixed amount and that is where I take on some risk Today, if there is a variation in market price, I absorb that risk. But, it is also a conscious decision because I know that to turn organic, farmers need a lot of encouragement. Once things are in full swing, we can see how better we can make the process. Today we are not able to meet all of our running costs because of reasons like the cost to maintain a cold storage unit that we have, for instance. Those kind of costs are better split up among more subscribers. So the more the subscribers, the closer I will be to breaking even and then profitability.
Which company's cold storage do you use?
This is from a start-up called Cool Crop. The reason why I chose this is because they are one of the start-ups that was associated with the Sangam AIC accelerator programme which I am also a part of. The reason why I decided to work with Cool Crop is because, unlike other players in the market, they allow you to rent out customized cold storage solutions. I did not know exactly how big a cold storage I needed. They customized the unit for me and I pay a monthly rental for it. There is no commitment that I have to buy the product, although I have that option.
This worked for me because I didn't have to lock up a lot of money into a cold storage unit.
Ms Sumeet Kaur yours is a brilliant initiative and this was an extremely interesting conversation. Your honesty and transparency about the certification part is extremely healthy to the bonds you are building between farmers and customers. We wish you all the best!
Thank you!
CONTACT:
Sumeet Kaur
Founder, Spudnik Farms
Email: spudnikfarms@gmail.com
Mobile: 9900606698
Ms Sumeet Kaur works on a supply chain model where, apart from encouraging excellent farming practices, she invests into building trust between the consumer and farmer. Community Supported Agriculture is the model she has adopted wherein agriculture and health is made sustainable by regaining the lost connection between farmer and consumer.
Hello and good morning Ms Sumeet Kaur!
Good Morning.
Can we start with a small introduction about yourself and what you do?
I run an organization called Spudnik Farms. Being in the farming sector since 2013, I have recently started working with other small and marginal farmers around the Kolar region. We work with them to provide marketing assistance for their produce, extension services, and assistance in pest and nutrition management. Ultimately, we pick up the produce and supply it directly to households in the city. We have been supplying vegetables since March 2019. Currently, we work with 8 farmers and supply to around 60 families in Bangalore.
Spudnik Farms was part of a one year incubation programme at NSRCEL, IIM-Bangalore. At present, we are in an accelerator programme run by AIC Sangam, and is supported by NITI Aayog. That is what we do, in a nutshell.
Are you native to Bangalore?
I am based out of Bangalore. I am not an agriculturist, academically. By virtue of qualification, I am a lawyer. I graduated from the National Law School, Bangalore. I quit my job as a Tax Advisor in 2012 and got into farming. I started by growing and supplying organic vegetables to friends and acquaintances from a small piece of land at Hoskote. That is when I realized that the agricultural space really interested me although I did not have any technical expertise. Everything I know today, I learnt on the job. It was a little difficult to sustain it financially because I was doing everything from growing the vegetables to delivering it at homes in the city. I realised that to make my work sustainable, I needed to make farming financially viable. Also, there were production issues as well; if you want to supply vegetables continuously I realized that I needed to have more area under cultivation. In that scenario, I worked out that instead of buying more land, I could make a better social impact if I started working with other farmers who may:
need assistance in marketing their produce; and
want to go organic but don't exactly know what to do.
The more I talked to farmers I realised that they are most willing to go organic but in situations like a pest attack or crop disease, if they aren’t provided with the right kind of advice and inputs, they are forced to walk the usual path. So, we go visit these farmers and create a production plan depending on the season, water availability, the type of soil they work on, etc. Through discussions we figure out what kind of crops they would prefer growing. Also, when it comes to organic farming, crop diversity is the key. Hence, we encourage them to grow 3-4 crops on a rotation basis. We provide them with seeds or source it for them. We visit them once a week and observe how their plants fare. If they require assistance with pest, disease or nutrition management, they can reach out to us and depending on the situation we decide on a corrective course of action.
Lastly, we pick up their produce, pack it and do a door-to-door supply.
How big is your organization? Logistics must be quite complicated here, right?
Logistics is just not my area of expertise. It doesn't interest me as well, to be honest. So, we have outsourced logistics. There is a local person who helps us with both the inbound and outbound logistics. I have a team of 5 people, which includes the two people who work on my farm. I have a farm manager who also manages the network of 8 farmers. He is a fairly senior person who has been with me since 2013. Apart from this, we have hired a young agri-professional who helps us create the planting calendars for our farmers and organise the production. To provide a continuous supply of vegetables, you need to have a plan in place. I need to plan everything three months in advance, including things like, ensuring that I have the right seeds that suits the soil type and anticipating the weather conditions. So, in short, I have 5 people and then my own driver. He also doubles up as a packing person and oversees the third party logistics people.
What are some of the challenges with respect to the initiative you have taken up?
Initially, one of the challenges was trying to figure out how to market this produce directly to people in the city. People are used to handpicking things from the local stores - so I wasn't sure how I would get them to buy this concept. When you sell things online, customers don't get to see the produce before buying it. But, experience taught me that if your product is good then word of mouth really picks up. I started with about 15 families. My only advertisement was their word of mouth and now we supply to about 60 families. We sell vegetables on a subscription basis, which is a slightly different methodology.
Can you elaborate on that please?
The customer signs up with us for a month and then whatever we grow that month is sent to the customer on a weekly basis. For example, if we have 4 farmers growing lady fingers and capsicum; we will have four others growing tomatoes and cucumber. Likewise, other vegetables. We gather the produce that all these farmers grow and divide them into baskets which we call weekly baskets. The customer then receives an assorted basket with 8-9 vegetables at their doorstep. We try keeping some preferences in mind. For instance, some people are either allergic or due to some reason do not eat certain vegetables. We make a note of such things upon customer registration. This being a monthly subscription, families can re-subscribe at the end of the month. This system helps sort out our production to a great extent because before the farmer sows the seed they are aware of the quantities they need to grow. When we talk to our customers and take down their preferences, I can estimate the amount of vegetables we need to grow so as to meet needs and keep this sustainable. This way farmers are also in a better position because they don't end up growing too much of one vegetable which they may not end up selling. We don’t have any formal agreements with our farmers which forces them to sell all their produce to us. That is not how we work. We do not aim at contract farming. We are giving them a support window in terms of marketing and technical support as per their need. This works out quite well for everyone involved - farmers can grow 4-5 different vegetables at the same time. This lowers their risk of not being able to recover their cost of cultivation. If the price of one vegetable goes down, they can make it up with the price of another. Hopefully farmers will be willing to expand their area of cultivation. This model helps them avoid the various commissions and rents that they usually deal with. We pick up their produce from their farm making transportation of products also convenient for them. Like I mentioned earlier, we have laid no restriction on them. Even if they have excess produce which was grown for our requirement, they are free to sell it in the local market.
What guarantee does the customer have that there are no chemicals being used while growing the produce?
Neither the farmers that I work with nor I have a certification in place. The beauty of what we do lies in the fact that our customers are free to come and spend time on our farms. They are welcome to come and see what we do. We are extremely transparent and open about how we cultivate the produce. When it comes to small and marginal farmers, a third party certification is something that isn't financially viable. Also, because we cater to the domestic market, certification is not a priority. Certification is a requirement when you want to enter the export market. Most of our customers are not interested in any kind of certifications. Rather, they value the fact that they know who is growing the produce for them. We focus on building trust between the farmers and our customers. That, I believe, is what is required. Today's organic market is so flooded with produce that claims to be organic that we, as consumers, tend to question the certification as well. This is because of lack of trust. So, I focus more on building the trust by keeping it transparent between the customer and the farmer. The more people you can avoid in this chain between farmer and consumer, the closer people are brought together and trust is built. The idea is to have a family farmer just like you have a family doctor. Every family, I believe, should know their source of food. This connection has snapped over time because of the crowd that penetrated into the chain that links farmers and consumers. A farmer in Kolar does not know who is consuming the vegetables he produces and what happens after his food leaves his farm. Similarly the consumer does not know who grows their produce or how and where it is grown. Hence, with this community driven approach, we hope to rebuild the long-eroded sense of trust, reliability and responsibility through personal connections.
How do you take care of pests and crop diseases?
The first thing that helps with pest management and diseases is diversity and crop rotation. These two aspects of farming takes care of a lot of farming issues. we chart out planting calendars for farmers. We try to give them crops that complement each other. For example, we encourage farmers growing tomatoes to plant extra basil in their row of crops. Not only does this result in better flavoured tomatoes, it also provides better pest protection as well. Similarly, we encourage them to have a boundary of garlic or other strong-smelling herbs as per season so that there is a natural pest control mechanism in place. This is a push and pull approach in companion planting. So, during the planning phase, we avoid associating plants that will harm each other or attract insects or pests that are detrimental to other crops. At the second level, we try to get the farmers to use naturally available pesticides. We encourage them to use a lot of fermented plant juices, Jeevamritha etc. In that respect, the agricultural department is doing a commendable job. They have these programmes to train farmers on using different natural potions for pest and nutrition management. Also, there is exchange of a lot of traditional knowledge between farmers. For instance, one of the farmers we work with, Gowramma, is a treasure house of recipes of different fermented plant juices that can be used to control different kinds of pests. She is a national award winning farmer from whom we learn a lot. We share this knowledge with our other farmers as well.
What kind of seeds do you use?
We try using naati seeds as much as possible. We also try to preserve our own seeds because seed autonomy is important to us both from a principle perspective, and also simply because they taste better. Having said that, it is not always possible to find desi seeds because of which at times, we are forced to use the hybrid variety. So, it is a mix of both. We also try procuring seeds from organizations and seed savers. There are many farmers who are well known for saving seeds. We travel and try procuring seeds from various sources.
How do you drive transparency between the consumers and farmers?
Most of the people who were with us when we started off, know me personally. They have come and seen the farm. They trust that I will not give them chemical food marketed as organic. The product speaks for itself. Customers can judge the quality of the produce from the taste and from their own experience after consuming it. There are mothers who come and tell us that their child has begun eating capsicum, for instance, after buying our produce. There are people who have told us that their children have begun eating more greens. You don't need to do much when you build such direct relationships. Like I said, most customers have visited our farms. They see what we do and then, of course, it is their call. I wouldn't want to force anybody to believe that I am doing organic agriculture. It just doesn't work that way.
How do you charge your customers?
We charge a standard monthly fee based on the cultivation charges. Having said that, basically the profit margin is directly related to the cost of cultivation. The closer the cost of cultivation is to zero the more the profit margin. This itself is an inbuilt mechanism for us not to use chemicals, which are expensive. Right now, we pay farmers the market price because that is what they are used to. We are gradually trying to transition them to a stage where they look at their production costs and decide for themselves the price they want to charge for their produce. That is another challenge that we are working on because that calls for a lot of training. , Farmers need to understand this concept. But the basic principle is simple – farmers should be looking at how much it costs for them to grow a vegetable and add their profit margin. The price offered to customers should be your profit margin added to your cost of cultivation. That is how any business runs. This entire concept for the farmers to imbibe will take a little time. We have only been working with them since 2018 and so we are currently giving them a rate of 20-30% more than the market rate. Hence, they are happy. But we are planning to transition them to a stage where they analyse and understand profits.
The challenge there would be that the market price would prove lesser than the cost all summed up, right?
Exactly! That is why we want to get them to a stage where the market price is not a matter of concern at all. They should look at their cultivation cost, add their profit margin and state their selling price. Also, once you start looking at cost of production, a lot of questions about the produce being organic and inorganic gets taken care of, automatically.
What is the basis on which you charge your customers?
We charge them a fixed amount and that is where I take on some risk Today, if there is a variation in market price, I absorb that risk. But, it is also a conscious decision because I know that to turn organic, farmers need a lot of encouragement. Once things are in full swing, we can see how better we can make the process. Today we are not able to meet all of our running costs because of reasons like the cost to maintain a cold storage unit that we have, for instance. Those kind of costs are better split up among more subscribers. So the more the subscribers, the closer I will be to breaking even and then profitability.
Which company's cold storage do you use?
This is from a start-up called Cool Crop. The reason why I chose this is because they are one of the start-ups that was associated with the Sangam AIC accelerator programme which I am also a part of. The reason why I decided to work with Cool Crop is because, unlike other players in the market, they allow you to rent out customized cold storage solutions. I did not know exactly how big a cold storage I needed. They customized the unit for me and I pay a monthly rental for it. There is no commitment that I have to buy the product, although I have that option.
This worked for me because I didn't have to lock up a lot of money into a cold storage unit.
Ms Sumeet Kaur yours is a brilliant initiative and this was an extremely interesting conversation. Your honesty and transparency about the certification part is extremely healthy to the bonds you are building between farmers and customers. We wish you all the best!
Thank you!
CONTACT:
Sumeet Kaur
Founder, Spudnik Farms
Email: spudnikfarms@gmail.com
Mobile: 9900606698
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