Need help with selling my Produce

Farm Questions
1

Friends, I am a software engineer.I ventured into farming a year ago. By Lord Krishna’s grace,there were some timely rains. I was able to produce more than 100 bags of peanuts. Mostly pesticide free. Now I am not sure where to check for current market price and market in which I can sell. Bengaluru is close by Madanapalli. Please help with next steps. Peanuts were harvested last week and are being dried now.

Thanks!!
Vinod.

2

Hi Vinod,

Excellent!! You are a great inspiration for many people. I’m sure the friends in this forum will help you with some contacts.

Good Luck mate :slight_smile:

3

Vinod,

Please take a look at krishimaratavahini.kar.nic.in/

Latest prices of different agri commodities are listed including groundnut.

4

Dear all,

Are there any effective online portals wherein farmers can place advertise about their produce? If so, kindly share the portal details. I am expecting my watermelon crop in another 12 to 20 days.

Thanks & Regards
Guru
Hiriyur
Karnataka

5

You can also try to sell your produce online at kisanmarket.com without any middlemen involved.
All the best…

6

For the benefit of other fellow friends, I found couple more mobile apps which help farmers to market their produce:

  1. Farmfirst
  2. Manditrades
  3. Rainbowsell

Farmfirst seems to be effective in my case. Might be just coincidental.

Thanks & Regards
Guru





7

Hi guru, did you sell and what was the experience?

8

Dear Chandra sir,

I have not yet sold. Planning harvest on Apr 20th 2016. I am just geared up for the action on the D-day. So collecting information on trade theories/terms and conditions etc.

I will surely update my experience in detail in the days to come. In the mean time, I request the forum brothern to share their experiences.

Thanks & Regards

Guru

9

One more update:

I also got an enquiry from Farmnest. So would like to convey my heartful gratitude. Long live Farmnest!
Not only this but I also got timely advises on Farmnest which have rectified my issues at farm many a time. Thanks to one and all in the forum.

Best regards
Guru

10

Dear Guru,
If you want to sell groundnut without any processing (nuts ?), please sell earlier after harvest .
Buyers generally give rates assuming moisture in fresh produce . If you delay there will be considerable loss in weight .

With very first groundnut produce my father had very bitter experience while selling, since he waited for bit long , meanwhile rates went down and groundnut was dried (almost 60-70% loss as compared to market rate of day 1).

Now a days my father grows groudnut on small piece of land . Everyone around our home knows we will have groundnut and most of the quantity is sold in KGs directly to peoples .

Hope it helps .

Thanks & Regards,
Prashant

11

Friends, don’t go to mandi or any of those portals .

Just try to sell retail to your friends and neighbors. Your effort is worth every minute.

You will know your customers and they know who is producing and will start appreciating your efforts.

decide if you want to produce more and be at the mercy of some wholesalers or sell at your own pace.

I have started selling my produce at my home to friends , it may take little time but will definitely payoff if you are not in hurry.

Thanks

12

Dear Natureworx,

Your proposal sounds definitely interesting. Sorry but I am not still not able to conceive operationally as to how it has to be implemented.

Say for example: My land is 160 kms from Bangalore and I stay with my family in Bangalore. I produced around 15 tons of watermelon.

  1. How can I go about marketing to my known references i.e., I would greatly appreciate if you can describe step by step approach to this way of marketing?
  2. Wont there be any legal obligations to this approach?
  3. What I understand is that the vehicle in which I carry my produce to sell directly to my friends and social circle would be questioned I guess.

Kindly elaborate for the benefit of entire forum.

Thanks
Best regards
Guru
Hiriyur

13

Dear Sri Guru,

Is your water melon seed supplied by M/s Known you seed or Namdhari or others. M/s known you seeds co and M/s Namdhari , are helping for marketing of produce also.

You can contact known you seeds officer, Sri venugopal,stationed in Tumkur, pH no 9663371742, and on request he will help you in marketing your water melons.

With best wishes, g.p.rao, farmer

14

Dear Guru,

Despite your distance it may not be a big hurdle.

With little ground work, get an acceptance/agreement with few apartment complexes where your friends are staying to sell exclusively at a better price direct from your farm.
Legally there is no restrictions for a farmer to sell , we can see many fruit stalls on the roads right.( I am not sure if there are any specific restrictions in Karnataka)

As a farmer you can always carry your produce.

My thought may be more appropriate if the produce is little more diverse i.e. more than one variety of fruit/vegetables and if we can harvest over few weeks instead of all at once.

Last year I sold about 4 tonne Mango from my farm in my apartment, over a period of 4 weeks.

For now , may be please follow as adviced by Sri G.P.Rao garu. But also you can try to sell some portion directly your self.

Thanks & regards,

15

Dear Guru
comments are free but facts are sacred
what Mr Natureworx said might work for home garden ,very small scale farms ,farms that are close to cities,farms with multiple crops/vegetables,regular supply
people are required to sell those products one regular basis

just for calculations, lets assume you have 1000 friends/relatives which is unlikely(i have around 15-20 friends and some 50 relatives)
you want to sell your 15 tons of water melon

so it comes around 15 kg/person/friend/relative, what will he do with 15 kg watermelon?
also that retail thing works out when every one wants watermelon during stipulated period of time(shelf life of watermelon) otherwise you have to store that

most importantly friends and relative will want your watermelon,but for free ;D :astonished: :sunglasses: ::) :wink: unlikely to get any payment

even if you own a supermarket daily retail sale of any product(apart from rice,onion tomato…) will be limited to quintols not tons

also logistics issue, one friend will be in electronic city and another in nelamangala, while carrying you can pay traffic police two big watermelons as bribe ::) :astonished:

you can convince your friends a watermelon a day will keep everyone away ;D

put watermelon on ebay -as award winning watermelon

sell it to political parties to throw at each other >:(

Get blessings from swamijis like shree Nityananda swamiji etc :-*

fun apart
only take your products to mandi/apmc/markets if you are well versed about business in such places, otherwise a lot of headaches(loading the products,unloading,transportation, sometimes prices fall ,you will have to wait to sell products, payment issues)

it is better for absentee farmers/white collar farmers to sell products at farm,get money there itself.Till you get hold of farming and marketing

We all can learn if Mr Natureworx explains how it is possible to sell large quantity of products in retail
price difference he got by selling mango directly
how he kept his 4 tons of mango? without mangoes going bad
any hurdles/problems he faced and how he rectified

thank you

16

Dear all,

Thanks G.P.Rao sir. Will get in touch with them for my next produce as I already am done with selling my produce to local agent @ 66,000 Rs lumpsum.
Approx. tonnage is 18 tons (rest approx. 8 tons are all sun burn).
HOPCOMs in Bangalore offered very good price of 12 Rs/kg with delivery but their requirement was only 3 tons per shipment. Vasantha Narasapura Industrial area (Between Tumkur & Sira) where there are lots of food processing units coming up offered decent price of 9 Rs/Kg with very strict guidelines on fruit appearance, weight etc which in my case were falling short.

Thanks Khannae sir for helping me see direct marketing from all the directions, PROs & CONs. This really helps in taking implementable decisions related to direct marketing depending on quantum of produce, logistics, various channels of marketing.

I do agree with Natureworx in the sense that there is good potential of marketing that can be done especially at the apartments but as rightly emphasized there has to be variety in produce to meet the needs of prospective customers on a regular basis. To achieve this I guess community farming would be more feasible but again has its own challenges which can be attended to only if one is on the field 24/7 to co-ordinate, collect, transport, monitor etc. Or on the contrary, we need to select the crop which is expensive by nature which yields comparatively less tonnage but has consistent demand. This may bring down the efforts of direct marketing considerably. Now the question is which are such crops?

Lets continue to churn our minds for more feasible marketing channels whenever time permits. Thanks again to one and all.

Best Regards
Guru

17

Hi Guru saab,
If it is ok with you can you roughly give economics of watermelon cultivation?
Like total expenditure and total income
Thank you

18

Dear Khan sir,

I just posted the details of watermelon economics at my farm in the below thread:

farmnest.com/forum/agricultural- … ?topicseen

Regards

Guru

19

Dear Sri Guru,

That is the reason, why I am growing flowers and vegetables.

Flowers: from past few years, I am concentrating on flowers, ie; Roses, Gerber’s and Chrysanthemums. I will study new and latest releasing varieties ,study them and on satisfactory results, purchase the plants and produce flowers and market them.

Daily production helps the farmer. Quality produce helps the farmer. More number of variety helps the marketing. New variety plants costs us more, risks are more and profit also more. Where as old variety/established variety plants cost is less, risks are less and of course , Profits are also less. We have to choose ,which suits us.

City markets ( in any city ) pays a good price, for any produce if it comes regularly to markets. ( for Flowers ), In a year , for 7 months good prices and 5 months low prices in general. That too in good 7 months , 3 months very high prices and 4 months good and fair high prices. In bad 5 months, 2 months will fetch too worst prices and remaining 3 months bad prices will exists.

Overall , city markets are good for regular supplies by farmers. Added advantage for Bengaluru ,in and around , farmers is, we get good production of flowers thought the year and the markets of other cities are mostly depends on Bengaluru farmers. I opine that, if we have regular, good quality flower production, cheating by traders is rather remote.

With best wishes, g.p.rao, farmer

20

Dear G.P.Rao sir,

I totally agree with the approach that you are trying to suggest to have variety in order to fill up the gaps in marketing.

It just came to my mind that dragon fruit which I heard yields continuously for most part of the year would suit this approach of having variety. The dragon fruit doesn’t seem to have much pest issues comparatively, grows with minimum water, needs less fertilizers, gives better yield and fetches fair price though the demand is yet to pick up. However climate, initial investment for special cement poles and other factors to grow dragon fruit may have to be properly studied.
Kindly comment on feasibility and other grey areas/risk areas related to dragon fruit which I may not be aware.

Thanks & Regards
Guru