Farmers selling directly to customers
The extreme exploitation in the agricultural markets (mandis) in India has led many farmers to consider bypassing the mandis to sell directly to customers. Farmers hope that by selling directly to customers they can get much better profits for their crops.
A recent success story from a farmer in Punjab who started selling directly to customers is heartwarming.
Agri-marketing: DTH from Farm
These farmers have shown that the future lies in selling directly from fields and not in mandis
Source: Indian Express
This story also gives a clue as to what farmers can do to get better profits:
- Farmers may need to select crops with better shelf-life or crops which can be processed in some way to be sold at a higher price per kg.
- Farmers must have the wherewithal to do some processing on the crops that they produce. For example, farmers growing sugarcane may get better profits if they sold jaggery or candies rather than directly selling sugarcane to the mills. This implies that the farmers may need to invest in food processing capability and capacity.
- They must have easy access to cities or large towns. They should also manage as much of the distribution and marketing themselves while continuing their work as farmers.
All this highlights a problem: Most smaller farmers cannot afford the sort of investments needed to setup a food processing unit. Apart from this, most smaller farmers will not have the mechanisms to sell directly to customers.
This is exactly the problem Unifield was set up to solve. Our goal is to help procure produce directly from farmers at a good price point which will far exceed what they will get at the mandis. Then Unifield will sell the produce in the cities thus farmers thus freeing the farmers from the responsibility of setting up and managing a supply chain.
If this is an idea which interests you, please do get in touch with us at sales ‘at’ unifield.in.