This is my first post on this forum, thanks to all of you for sharing your knowledge on this forum for free .
After reading through many topics, I realized couple of things:
Buying a farmland for a city bred guy is difficult.
Selling your yield for a handsome price is even more difficult.
I have been getting some invaluable inputs from many of our members and have been planning to gradually move into this field.
My plans are as follows:
Open a couple of vegetable outlets (not spending more than 75K for each). Start procuring vegetables from the wholesale market. This is to get a first hand experience and also make my presence felt in the market.
Tie up with a friend who has a farmland (about 3 acres) in outskirts of Bangalore (50-50 partnership, I don’t pay for the land but we share the profits). I have to bear all the farming expenses like seeds, labour and other things.
I work on the field and grow vegetable and fruits that can be sold at my store (have made up my mind to use natural farming techniques only). Grow all the vegetables in small quantities just to suffice the needs of the two stores.
Then sell them at market price at my store, and will also buy vegetables from other farmers and pay them also a handsome price (buy only those that I can’t grow).
If things goes as per plan then open chain outlets and procure the goods from the farm directly, thus helping the whole community ( needless to say I benefit ).
I know this plan has been tried by big players and have failed, but since we are doing on a small scale I thought we could be successful.
Kindly let me know if this is practical or just looks good on papers.
Note:
In the meantime I will be trying to buy my own land.
I think that is a great idea. Controlling end to end will probably be the best to understand the pulse of what market needs are and also effectively cutting out the middlemen.
A lot of farms where I live supply directly to restaurants or to farmers markets, or the farms themselves have a store attached to the farm gate in high density areas.
I was thinking along same lines and wish you all the best
Hi ?
Your realizations and plans are conflicting all together as all points are leading away from other points.
Your point no 3 is going to defeat other points if you stay in city and do farming.
If you decide to stay in farm then what about children education facilities?
Do not sail on 2 boats at same point of time decide to be businessmen or farmer.
How can you manage your time at both in farm and marketing? as you can’t present in both places at same point of time?
Are you procuring from whole sale markets? if yes then how you can help farming community?
Think again and again to take decision as you wanted to be producer or marketer or both? if you wanted to be in both fields, then you need to stay in the farm and do sell your produce either fresh or after doing value addition of the said produce to get premium prices.
You cannot depend agriculture game only on short time crops like vegetables, you should have mufti crops which can start yield from 45th day to next 3 generations of your family tree.
All the best.
There are already many people ho has thought just like you and formed oulets. This in a scale of single shop to reetail chains. see below link for the list of outlets veganbengaluru.wordpress.com/veg … suppliers/
As you discussed above you cannot have both activity unless you have very trusted people and you just manage by shuttling both places. End of the day the effort is not worth.
Dont get confused with Natural farming. Natural farming is " Do nothing". You will be sowing,watering and harvesting. You shall not be doing deweeding,no spraying of pesticide or fertiliser, no pruning of plants etc. Every thing must be handled by nature. You need strong will for this. Very few people are doing this.
But you can do organic farming.
1.First procure land if you dont have.(Eligibility in Karnataka and few other states:you or your family must be farmers and non tax payers)
2. Finish all investments like farm house, borewell, drip irrigation, farm equipments.
3. Then you quit your urban job.
I do something like this and that is not full time. I planted a few vegetables like Okra, Bitter Goud, Beans, Borabati as a small kitchen garden and they did not turn out that bad. After consuming at home and distributing to my friends over the weekend I could make a few hundreds a week (I am a weekend farmer and go to my farm in the weekends and get what is grown) . This phase is completed.
I later went little bigger and got some saplings from Sneha Nursery (500 each) of Marigold, Chilli, Binjal and Tomato. I left them for the mother nature to take care but spent a considerable sum of money on weeding (need to learn a few tricks like multching). This also did not turn out bad except for the chillies where the weeds have over grown the plants. But for Tomato, Bringal and Marigold the produce is not bad. I normally get around 15kgs of each every week and get around Rs.500 only.
I normally sell them in a park (where people come for a morning or evening walk) in my neighbourhood after distributing to my friends.
My suggestion to you is, you need to make sure the what ever you get is sold as soon as possible. You will surely be successful if you do full time farming. Work on the economics before you jump into the trade. Labor is not cheap and the implements cost too.
as discussed, in this present time, do only where personally we can monitor, control, and administrate. doing multiple retail outlets and do farming seems tough and non viable. for calculation purpose, if you are intending to open outlets in major town, is it possible to do in 75k per outlet, rent, salary, deposit…etc may exceed the amount you have set. if you are targeting small village, how you can manage logistic for entire retail outlets scatted in different locations. ? ant venture in small scale may not be workable when we stepped out from our village . if we have production in our own village/location and have direct marketing facility within 10-25kms with easily avail public transportation then only it can be workable in small scale. any own private transporation min rs. 8-10 km need to spend. so need to calculate logistic, labour, then moist important protection of shelf life of vegie… it is perishable.
for a producer, I suggest tie up with hostels, catering team…etc or large retailers. do not venture in to retailing in starting.
or for initial trial and error learning starting a single retail shop and source initially from local wholesale market. and in meantime lease land either close to native or in distance and do farming there in leased land. so when ever you visit that land you can also locally source vegitbale and transport in your vehicle itself. so you farm visit will be fare free and same time you can also get proper net work in sourcing.
As discussed earlier me and my freind are a part of this venture and plan to split our responsilities equally as we plan to share 50-50.
Yes the biggest confusion that we are having is :
Whether to have our own store and sell our produce or
Sell our produce to a couple of retailers in the initial stages and then have our own store in the later stages.
After seeing all the inputs I feel the 2nd option is safer ( less investment and more focus on one task at a time ).
Srinivas can you please give more details about your harvest like how big your farm is, did you get only 15kgs for the whole week or every day or was it 15kgs of each or all put together.
Your details will help us calcualte an estimated returns.
We are planning to grow multiple crops in 2 acres of land ( 4 varities in each acres ), thus having a variety and less risk.
Is this model workable or should we grow just 2 crops in 2 acres of land like what most of the farmers do.
Hi? This is what a farmer initiative from a Farmer for his sustainable growth. I appreciate your efforts and wishing you bright feature. Add such simple ideas to sell your products without additional expenditures. Once you get confidence from those who sold your products, they themselves only advertise fro your product and get additional customers.
As per the advice I have recieved in this forum, we have planned not to setup a store for the first six months ( or till we get a steady flow from our farm ).
SInce there are 2 Desi cows, 2 non-desi cows and 4 sheeps in the farm, we plan to use both vermicompost ( prepared from non-desi cows and sheeps ) and Jeevamrutha ( prepared from desi cows ) on our fields.
Does this make sense or just using one of these is enough.
The moment you aply jeevamritha, soil needs mulching. Other wise microorganisms die in couple of hours because of sunlight. Soil needs to be wet while you aply jeevamritha.
For Jeevmritha Desi cow urine and dung is needed. Hybrid cow dung cannot be used because lack of population of microrganisms.
If you are planning for Vermi compost, you can use jeevamrith to sprinkle on vermi bed frequently. Provide a outlest at the bottom of the tank to collect excess liquid. This liquid is as good as vermi compost. Use this as foliar ( spray at the bottom of the leaves) These act as growth harmone for vegetable plants.
My farm is around 10 Acers but the bingals I am growing are just 500 saplings and yes I get only around 15 KGs per week after being consumed by my care taker.
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. This phase is completed.