Direct delivery to stores and process?

I would like to know about the Direct Store Delivery where farmers can sell Tomato, onions, capsicum etc directly to the stores.
You can classify into three Groceries, Vegetables, Fruits.
Please explain the Process and the challenges.

Are your vegitables organic? If so find below contacts
veganbengaluru.wordpress.com/veg … suppliers/

Sahajasamrudha has a coporate wing who buys organic vegetables from farmers in bulk. If need I can get the contact.

Hi Sri - Do you have a bulk procurement contact at SahajSamrudha? We will be ready to market drumsticks in a couple of months and a volume customer would be ideal. I looked at the list of store you provided, that is great info but we are looking for an org which would be interesting in bulk (regular) procurement. Appreciate your help!

Hi?
SAHAJA SMRUDHA AGRICULTURE PADDY 9731275656
549,SAJJAN RAO CIRCLE,VV PURA,BLR-4 it is very close to Kalasipalya bus stand where all private buses from south India will arrives & departs.
market@sahajasamrudha.org

Don’t forget to have a taste of jack fruit (need to request land lord to have it) which give fruits for round the year Once you personally visit to this office

My question to you is why can’t you sell on your own as huge demand is their around your farm?
People @ Chennai are desperately awaiting for healthy food products

Wishing you all the best.

Hi Swamy,

You’re correct, there is considerable retail demand in our area but we are fast approaching a tipping point. We have been selling our produce in retail via a couple of stores, locations but they can only move 50-75 kgs per week, per location. Since our production volumes are now increasing, we need to secure a few reliable high-volumes customers. Ideal customer would be an value-added processor looking for a farm-to-fork type of arrangement. We want to shy away from brokers since they are usually unreliable and always exploitative. A multi-location retailer which can move 150-200 kg per week and with a central procurement operation, may be an option as well.

We are looking to form or join a marketing consortium since this marketing issue is definitely not unique to us and will benefit every farmer / producer. Looking forward to suggestions from the community

Dear Johri,

Sahaja Samrudha is interested only your produce is organic.

ISKCON Eco Agri gives free organic certification. I will get you contacts If you need.

Appreciate if someone can share right contact details of Star Bazaar (Tata Enterprise).
Star Bazaar prefers to procure locally.

Dear Johri,

thanks for initiative. I am in finishing stage of land procurement in Thenkasi area. I hope there would be more like minded people who can make a consortium for marketing our agri products from directly farm to fork. one of the main and major buyer we can concentrate hostels in educational institutions and TN have plenty of the same. I would take atleat 4-5 months more to concentrate fully in the farm activity. but menatime we can start to create a network within TN itself for direct marketing activities. Mr Krishnan from chennai has already contacted who is developing a farm of 50acre in Kadayanalloor area. pls analysis whether we can work out a consortium for knowledge sharing ,farming, growing and to marketing irrespective our farms are situated in different locations in TN . a group efforts may bring wonderful… I am not sure on these but you being a through learned and highly educated/ active farmer you can better guide on this pls…

rgds
mathew

There are lots of challenges to this. Challenges to farmers, the store guy or the end retailer guy. Nobody likes a change in the existing system. The 2-3 layers of middlemen have their life at stake. They earn their bread out of this changing hands. While often middlemen are made out to be the bad guys but its not easy on anyone. The so called Hopcoms (lalbagh) farmer association on which lots of articles get written on how efficient it is - is a charade. You need to be highly connected guy to push through your produce (example - banana) or be ready to Grease the plams all the way through dealing with hostility. Either way the effort does not make sense and the fair price that one wants to earn is traded-off in the above efforts.

The store guy or the end retailer guy will have inconsistencies on the arrival and further sale of produce. So he would not want to risk any changes. He would rather go and buy through the established set up in mandi or market. I have even heard mandi guys directly suggesting not even to try any thing out of the established norms.

Untill unless you can establish a store yourself to sell your produce or jointly pool a group of farmers to do so, this looks like unbreakable jinx. Establishing a end store has its challenges and so does procuring variety of produce to sell. Add transportation.

Companies like Airtel (FieldFresh) and Reliance (Reliance Fresh) which tried at replacing the mandi system or be a substitute are bleeding. Airtel, I believe has cut down its investments substantially. Tata Chemicals ‘suspended’ the operations of Khet-Se Agriproduce operations in India,

Still I am hopefull, there should be some way out…and wait is on…

if you want to experiment just pick any one fruit and give it a try…Season of watermelons. Its a very interesting subject if you wanna learn from farm to fork and how the economies work out.

Sri - Yes please. We would be interested. Could you please provide contact details directly to nkjohri@gmail.com? Thanks!

Matthew - Good to hear that we are beginning to realize collaboration is a win-win situation for everyone. Please email me your contact details and I’ll include you in our distribution list of farmer-producer consortium. My email is nkjohri@gmail.com More when we connect next and good luck with your land purchase :slight_smile:

CSPlantations - Your observations are mostly accurate, which further underscores the need of a consortium based marketing system. I cannot comment on why existing Hopcoms are a sham but I am not surprised. I do firmly believe that the end retailers are looking for reliable supply and high quality produce. Re: the livelihood of various brokers, I am not terribly sympathetic of such folks unless they truly add value - which at this time seems to serve the purpose of earning a $ at the farmer-producer’s expense.

Further, we need not reinvent the wheel at all. The consortium that I am suggesting is an attempt to connect with retailers (FieldFresh, etc), processors (SWAD,etc) or industries (Dabur,etc) based on volume sales. Your comment about being highly connected is absolutely true. Consortium success will be directly related in parts to how the participants are able to leverage contacts in their personal network for the benefit of consortium sales. Collective power of everyone’s network is bound to be greater than one! All we need is one person to know the procurement manager at SWAD or FoodWorld to get a meaningful dialog going. Individual producers often do not have the right contact - which usually spells the difference between loosing money or making a handsome profit. That’s reality…

If we have enough participants in a consortium, the customers will be inclined to discuss favorable terms with us - which we all know is almost never the case if a producer sells to a broker. If volume customers as listed above, seek certain type of products, the producers are likely to consider cultivating them given they have assurance of demand and sale. So in very basic ways, over time it will evolve into a form of (truly) mutually beneficial contract farming but completely voluntary.

I found it amusing that you referred to trying out Watermelons! We did that last year and our learnings were :

  • Farm-gate / broker sales were going to result in disappointing sales.
  • Local / immediate area demand was limited, our production volumes were greater.
  • But our volumes were not large enough to be profitably shipped to large volume metros.
  • Retailing to public is not easy or recommended for a typical farmer-producer.
    We ended up retailing our watermelon produce in the local market and made a small profit. That is also the reason we are not doing Watermelon this year - not because of production issues but due to lack of profitable marketing arrangements at this time.

The typical demographic I expect to respond to the consortium model at this time will be : educated, agri will not be their primary income, have large(er) farm holdings, have some capital set aside for progressive practices, have family farms which are not being actively managed by them, looking for a transparent go-to market strategy, existing farmers looking to develop / experiment with additional product lines. It is certain, the consortium model will not be an instant fit with all types of producers but as they say ‘success begets success’ so I am certain that if we can prove out the concept, getting additional participants will not be a problem.

Absolutely, should try out a consortium!!!. Hopcoms is consortium as well!!!. Mandi’s call themselves a consortium as well. Consortium of middle-men. Knowing the right guy @ any of Star’s, Reliance, More - They are already hooked up. Hooked up out of obligation or strength of the supplier or monitory reasons etc. There are many more. .You often see that your quality of produce is way over better than what you find in these big retailers. If the networking is of that order, then that guy would not be asking questions or pondering solutions over on this forum.

I am not sympathetic to the middle-men either. Middle-men are every where. Starting from Real estate, RTO or any transaction for that matter. Few call them consultants, negotiators, lobbyists, brokers etc. Once the consortium starts and then if its consortium for benefits, then politics starts. Reliance tried replacing Mandi system by starting RELIANCE FARM RANCHER system around 2008-09. Bleeding was so much that they stopped. Probably one of the real success stories of Farm to Fork have been Cafe Coffee-Day. They are really true Farm to Fork. Unless you can be the last guy before the buyer, and also the producer of scale beating the system may take lot of energy, muscle, money and desperation to an extent. Nothing wrong in trying.

Not sure why you found the reference to Water Melon’s “AMUSING” (Was it a typo?) I am trying to imply exactly the same list of learnings as you have documented. Those are the exact challenges that I am referring to.

Dear Johri,

ISKCON Eco Agri. Organic certification. Contact Yogesh. 09731899334. This is annually renewable certification.

There are many farmer’s consortiums. There is one in Mysore. it is called “Nesara”(sunlight). This consortium collects agri products and sells to small time retailers.
All consortiums are hidden to us because they are not internet savvy farmers. So it goes un-noticed.

They take orders over phone and deliver it to small retailers and collect cash from them same day. Farmers supply graded vegetables with different rate slabs. So there will not be much negotiations. They have built a mutual trust.

If you are interested to talk to these people I will try to get contact number.

Dear Chandra/Admin,

Do you see an opportunity where farmnest can create list of all farmers/consortium and create a organic virtual mandi ?
In this age, most of the deals from train ticket to buying a washing machine are happening on the internet.
I agree that most of the farmers in India are not internet savy but do you think we have to start somewhere?
Personally i feel farmnest can start small and come up with a working model of organic virtual mandi, it cannot replace the regular mandi but definitely can act as a alternative to the regular mandi.
We have so many tech savy organic farmers in this forum and of course the organic dealers/consumers are in the cities and they are also mostly techsavy.

Thanks,

Hi hampiorganic,

You just beat me to posting this!
Happy to facilitate such an initiative, but need some concrete practical ideas. There are in fact some websites that came up with similar intentions to be a meeting place for the buyers and sellers of agri produce, but have not really worked.

Post all your ideas and we can together come up with a practical solution.

Thanks.

Hi,
Is there any group near kanakapura ?

Thanks

Sri,

thanks for the ISKON details. We will connect with them in the coming weeks to understand their certification protocol.
RE: the Mysore consortium, I would like to connect with you offline. Is there an email where I can reach you? I am at nkjohri@gmail.com

Thanks again!

CSPlantations - Looks like your experience with Hopcoms has not been very positive.

Is there anyone in this forum who has fresh vegetable contacts at Hopcoms? Knowing the right people will make a world of difference at such places. We can consider trading at Hopcoms as well if we get the right contacts.

Which part of Kanakapura?