Fellow Connect April 2013

Such A Long WaitThe Indian farming sector continues to wait for that

far reaching movement

Quarter 1 | April 2013

02 | FELLOWCONNECT APRIL 2013

Editorial MANOJ CHANDRAN MEERA VIJAYANN OLINA BANERJI

ContributorsRICHA GOVILCHANDRA DUBEYVIJAY PRATAP SINGHARCHANA SINHACHRISTIE PEACOCKDEVI MURTHYMEERA VIJAYANNAYESHA VEMURIOLINA BANERJI

Talk to us [email protected] www.indiaashoka.orgAddress 54, 1st Cross, Domlur Layout Bangalore 560071 IndiaTelephone 080-4274-5777

Design SAMYAK JAIN AND MANJARI SHEEL

DisclaimerThe views and comments mentioned in the articles of fellowconnect are that of the respective authors and do not reflect the position of ashoka on these issues.

fc | CONTENTS

Transforming Agriculture 04 Richa Govil

Farming For The Future 08 Chandra Dubey

Meera VijayannHigher Values Bigger Profits 10

A Vision For Farming 12 Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya

The Missing Links 14 Archana Sinha

Reviving Rural Incomes

17

Christie Peacock

Going Local

18

Olina Banerji

The Power Of The Crowd

20

Simon Schneider

The Face Of The Indian Farmer 22 Garima Rana and Richa Govil

Paving The Road Ahead 26 Meera Vijayann

What Disruptive Innovation Really Means

The Right Connect | Ashmeet Kapoor

28

32

Ayesha Vemuri

Olina Banerji

Contents

Cover Photo courtesy: http://bisa.cimmyt.org/

FELLOWCONNECT APRIL 2013 | 03

Record agriculture productions don’t mean anything if we do not include those who produce the food in the develop-ment process. The time has come to snap the chain of woes that is passed from one generation of farmer to the other. There is no denying that this is a complex prob-lem that has a number of interlinking and cross-dependent elements involved.

It has, therefore, been left to the social entrepreneurs to bring about positive change in the lives of those who are en-gaged in the agriculture sector. There are more than 75 Ashoka Fellows whose work in the space of rural development and farming have resulted in pathbreak-ing shifts in the system and established social and economic norms. Social en-trepreneurs have always led positive shifts in the lives of the rural populace in India.

Over the last 20 years, we have success-fully created an ecosystem that breeds entrepreneurship in the country. This is now maturing into a culture. As a re-sult, a whole new generation has evolved that has the advantage of being exposed to this entrepreneurial culture at a very early age.

Our farmers are nothing less than en-trepreneurs. They are as open to exper-imenting with new ideas and take risks as any business entrepreneur, whose suc-cess stories are known by the world. For an equal playing field, there is a need for the former to have the right ecosystem– knowledge, information, markets, finan-cial, infrastructure and several others.

Such an ecosystem is only possible through the collective will, across all stakeholders in society. We need to tear the walls down so that there is greater appreciation of each other’s strengths. When the walls go, there would be a greater will to collaboratively work to-wards addressing these challenges. It is in a collaborative environment that millions of solutions and models will emerge, be tested, succeed and be replicated.

We have always looked at this huge is-sue from a problem-forward approach. What we need is to work on a vi-sion-backward approach.

To millions of us, the Indian farmer is a thousand year old man, who has al-ways looked the same. (Remember the illustrations in our textbooks?) An old,

weary-looking, poor, illiterate man, liv-ing in a parallel world called rural India that has no access to the ‘real world’. In the minds of the ‘mainstream In-dia’, time has stood still for the farmers. The next generation of a farmer’s fam-ily is a copy of the earlier generation. Nothing changes.

Or, is there a change happening? Do we realize that each one of us is connected to the problem? When do we create a generation of farmers in India that does not look like the previous one?

Warm Regards,Manoj [email protected]

Problem

The

Lfc | EDITORIAL

Let us come to the point straight away. Neither this editorial, nor this edition of FellowConnect proposes to provide a solution to the problems faced by the Indian agricultural and allied sectors and the people who are engaged in it.

This is a humble attempt to bring to the fore some inspiring work being carried out by social and business entrepreneurs, which has created significant impact over the years. The attempt also, is to ponder upon the roles others must play to resolve these issues permanently.

The challenges of farming in India are a difficult subject to address. So much has already been written about the socio-economic issues in the agricultural sector that one can spend more than a lifetime to get to the core problems . The sector throws up data that read like fiction. It employs more than 50 per cent of our workforce and yet contributes only 21 per cent to our GDP. India is the second largest producer of farm products. And yet, we read about Indian farmers being among the poorest in the world. Indian farmers continue to lead a miserable existence.

Scores of government programs may have been introduced, but only a few have had any success, while the rest died a natural death. None, however well intentioned they have been, have lifted this workforce, one of the largest in the country, from their generations-old suffering.

Photo courtesy: http://www.agricorner.com

Photo courtesy: Ellen Reitman

I t is in a col laborat ive environment that

mi l l ions of solut ions and models wi l l

emerge, be tested, succeed and

repl icated.



WHow can we make agriculture

economically viable for small

farmers? By infusing scientific

knowledge, technology,

business expertise and finance.

By RICHA GOVIL

TRANSFORMING AGRICULTURE

When we think about farming, the im-ages that usually come to our mind are romantic images of a farmer ploughing his fields with draft animals, lush green fields sparkling in the sun or perhaps smiling women doubling over transplant-ing paddy in inundated fields. But the reality is often very different from these popular images.

The average landholding in India is small: it was 1.06 hectares (about 2.6 acres) in 2003 and estimated to be 0.8 hectares (2 acres) in 2013. Eighty-six per-cent of Indian farmers qualify as small and marginal farmers, owning less than 2 hectares of land.

Economically Unviable

The average income of farming house-holds from all activities is below the Indi-an per capita poverty line. This is discon-certing. The primary reason any farmer engages in farming is to generate income. Yet, farming is unviable for a majority of families; 52 percent of India’s working adults (67 percent of working women) still depend on agriculture as their pri-mary profession.

Making farming viable requires an infu-sion of scientific knowledge, technology, business fundamentals as well as finance. Investment in physical and institutional infrastructure is essential for revitaliz-ing the sector. For this, Ashoka talked to several farmers, civic sector organi-zations, non-profits, experts, investors and food companies to gain a thorough understanding of current challenges and possible solutions.

Our analysis shows that there are five ar-eas where change is needed.

1. Changing Crops And Cropping Patterns

A vast majority of farmers grow wheat and rice, despite the fact that per cap-ita demand for these crops has been dropping one percent per year for the last decade. Rice and wheat are low margin crops, with some farmers not even recovering cost of inputs. They generate cash only once or twice per year. Switching to multiple crops with staggered harvest can not only allevi-ate the cash flow challenges of farming households, but also spread risk.

There is a pressing need for better mar-ket linkage to give farmers better visibil-ity into crops (and varieties) with high demand. One social entrepreneur, Shashank Kumar, in Bihar is providing such demand visibility and supporting farmers in their switch to higher profit-ability crops with greater demand, such as oilseeds, vegetables and niche crops such as baby corn.

Besides income, there is another very important reason to encourage switch-ing – mono cropping in many parts of the country has severely deteriorated the quality of soil and the environment. However, switching to a crop that has not been typically grown in the area brings in its own sets of challenges.

First, it goes without saying that the soil and climate have to be conducive to the cultivation of the new crop. Second, the farmer has to learn how to grow the new crop (or new variety of the same crop). For example, I visited farmers who were growing baby corn for the first time and

fc | OVERVIEW

Photo courtesy: http://bisa.cimmyt.org/


had let the cobs grow too much simply because they did not know when to har-vest it. While the produce was still us-able, a significant portion of its potential value was lost.

Third, buyers for the new crop need to either already exist at the local mandi (wholesale market), or brought to the local market, or the produce shipped to wherever the buyers are. Interventions in crop switching (such as organic farming) work well when a new market-facing in-termediary is created to procure the pro-duce directly, or act as a sourcing agent for other buyers. And lastly, the finan-cial risks of making the transition needs to be absorbed or softened.

2. Increasing Yield

‘I know how much seed and fertilizer to put. I have been growing soya for more than a decade,’ said a Madhya Pradesh farmer who I met in 2012. He was well educated with an M.Sc. in agriculture, knew rudimentary English words, and owned 45 acres of irrigated land and a tractor. But he didn’t know that his, and India’s, soya yield per hectare reaches only 37% of global average.

India’s yields are one third to half of glob-al standards for many crops: Average rice yield is half that of China, and overall cereal yields are about a third of that of the U.S. There hasn’t been a significant increase in yields in the last decade.

Yield improvement starts with an im-provement in soil quality, irrigation and crop management methods. Ashoka Fellow KC Mishra has developed agro-nomical software that can advise farmers on seed selection and better soil manage-ment. The poor quality and lack of timely availability of good quality seeds and fertil-izers is another challenge that KC Mishra is trying to address. Fellow Vijay Pratap Singh has developed a highly personal-ized crop alert service that alerts farmers regarding a calendar of activities based on scientific cultivation practices and also fol-lows up to determine compliance.

Introducing farmers to new equipment is critical for increasing yields as well. For example, a Rs. 2,00,000 diesel powered paddy transplanter (not tractor based) can cover more acres per day than 10 casual la-borers. Yet, there has been limited invest-

ment in better equipment (besides tractors and implements); especially tools and ma-chinery for traditional women’s tasks.

While the above discussion focuses on cultivation, improving the yields and in-come from livestock activities is equally important. The poor health of livestock resulting from inadequate knowledge about proper care results in low yields. There is a shortage of affordable fodder and supplements in most parts of the country. Veterinary services are rarely affordable and often almost non-existent.

3. Reducing Cost Of Production

Often, increasing yields goes hand in hand with lowering the cost of inputs since Indian farmers overuse seeds and fertilizers. India’s total use of fertilizers is 168kg per hectare, which is 1.6 times the average for the US. There is a huge opportunity to reduce costs simply by ef-ficient use of fertilizers and other inputs. Ashoka Fellow Vijay Pratap Singh’s highly personalized crop alert service has shown that timely and correct applica-tion of seeds, fertilizers and other inputs can reduce input costs by 30 percent and increase yields by 10-15 percent.

Lowering finance costs for farmer credit can have a substantial impact on the total cost of production and net income from farming activities.

4. Increasing Price Realization For Farmers

On the average, farmers receive 10-20 percent of the end-value of fresh produce and much less for processed goods. This is because of the number of transactions involved between harvesting at the farm to the plate of a consumer (i.e. the pro-duce is re-sold multiple times before reaching the consumer).

Intermediaries in the agricultural supply chain play a critical role as well. They gather information about demand, ab-sorb the risk of product quality and often finance production expenses, and charge substantial interest and fees. However, very few intermediaries add any value to the produce: primary grading and sorting of produce, or even accurate measure-ment are missing in the contemporary Indian supply chain.

Often increasing yields goes hand in hand with lowering cost of inputs, since Indian farmers overuse seedsand fert i l izers

Photo courtesy: Ashoka India

Procurers of agri-produce (food compa-nies) lament the lack of modern inter-mediaries in the supply chain because it prevents them from better meeting consumer needs. National branded atta (wheat flour) producers blend up to eight varieties of wheat with different water ab-sorption properties and texture to create different atta blends for consumers in north and south India. Spice companies seek the traceability of chilli varieties for similar reasons.

Ashoka Fellow Muthu Velayutham works with communities which gather medicinal herbs near Madurai, in Tamil Nadu. By undertaking primary process-ing (through a producer company) and then selling the produce to consumer product companies, he is able to secure a higher income for the communities who do the collection.

In southern Andhra Pradesh, Fellow Bablu Ganguly’s organization creates val-ue-added products from organic millets and other produce, which enable high-er price realization for farmers through their ownership of the producer compa-ny that does the processing. In the North, the Himalayan Action Research Center in Uttarakhand has formed women’s federations to do primary processing of vegetables, spices and herbs cultivated by them. They are now experimenting with different kinds of oils and extracts to further increase price realization and reduce the risk of carrying stock.

5. Managing Risk

Agriculture carries many different kinds of risks: risks related to production, stor-age, transportation, market price fluctu-ation and timeliness of financial settle-ments. Providing solutions for managing and mitigating this risk is as important as increasing incomes.

Many social businesses and civic sector organizations are addressing these risks through a combination of prompt pay-ment (often immediately upon delivery), better information access, value-addition and transferring the risks of storage, transportation and market to the collec-tive. Some organizations are consider-

ing promoting drought-resistant varieties, while others are focusing on crop rota-tion and the planting of multiple crops simultaneously.

Breaking Down Walls

While some of the above solutions are still in a pilot stage, many are well prov-en and understood. The proven models need to be shared, scaled and adopted across the country. Knowledge sharing among social businesses and civic sector organizations working in this sector is essential for large-scale transformation cutting across districts, states across the nation.

Ashoka’s Rural Innovation and Farming program is focusing on four areas. First, Ashoka is working with social entrepre-neurs (Fellows working in agriculture) to form a sectoral platform for knowledge exchange and collective action. We en-vision this platform evolving into an active platform to drive scale and wider adoption of proven solutions. The sec-ond area of focus is the role of women in agriculture – their preferred crops and livestock, their information and resource needs – and how organizations can bring about social and economic transforma-tion by focusing on women’s economic activities.

Third, Ashoka is exploring the role of agriculture and food supply chains in creating healthier, more nutrient replete societies, both at the bottom and at the top of the economic pyramid. Fourth, our research and anecdotal evidence shows that young people are leaving farming; however, they don’t have many alternate economic opportunities available to them. Ashoka is exploring business models for creation of viable agri-businesses which provide both en-trepreneurship and employment oppor-tunities to rural youth – both men and women.

Through these four program streams, Ashoka hopes to help create a more dy-namic, equitable and sustainable agricul-tural value chain, which meets the eco-nomic needs of farming households as well as societal and ecological objectives.


Richa Govil leads the RIF (Rural Innovation and Farming) Program at Ashoka India and has extensive experience working with businesses owned by or interfacing with urban and rural poor. She can be reached at [email protected].

1.6ratio of India’s usage of fertilizers to that of the U.S.(per hectare)



In Conversation with CHANDRA DUBEY

What is the model?We do farming on lands of other farm-ers in either leased or cost/production-sharing mode. Our approach to farming is based fundamentally on scientific tech-niques and our belief that scientific and technology based farming is a platform to employ best practices. Mechanization is an integral part of these scientific prac-tices.

Our methods can help aggregate lands, increase farm yield on a sustainable ba-sis using scientific farming methods and modern farm equipment, democratize modern farming know how, increase food security, and increase the income of farmers.

What gaps do you seek to address through Bhusan Agro?About 380 million Indians suffer from malnutrition. The productivity per acre of most crops in India now is almost 25-30 percent of the productivity in both de-veloped and developing countries. Food inflation is rising continuously and farm-ing is non-remunerative for most farm-ers. Rural youth are no longer interested in agriculture. The need to address these gaps in farming is thus essential.

Most of the farmers in India constitute the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) of

the population. The most important customers of our business model are the farmers who lease their land to us, or work with us on cost/production sharing mode. We believe that they are the ones who must benefit first from our enter-prise. Once that goal has been achieved, then other stakeholders will also benefit from the value being unlocked by our business model.

What areas do you operate in?Our current area of operation is near Sagar in Madhya Pradesh. Sagar is in Bundelkhand, a backward region in MP with a high percentage of tribal people. We have concrete plans to expand to Baghelkhand, another backward tribal region in MP. Given the right resources, we can expand to Chattisgarh as well.

What scientific practices have you introduced to improve yields? What impact have you seen so far?The most important practices of our model are soil testing, balancing the soil nutrient quality, chiseling for higher rain-water absorption and making soil porous for better growth of roots. Some others areas we focus on are proper land prepa-ration, overall sanitation of plots and sys-tematic and proactive crop management.

In our third year of operation, we’re growing on 56 leased lands. Due to our efforts, productivity on these lands has seen an improvement of 20-40 percent over lands of neighbouring farmers. Keeping in consideration the investment appetite of the farmer, we have identified the right sequence of scientific methods to be adopted. Neighboring farmers have a observed visible difference in our crops in comparison to theirs.

Your pilot currently works with a handful of farmers. Are other farmers interested in these tech-niques?In the last three years of work, we have realized that pushing is not the right strat-egy. Instead we need to pull farmers into our fold. When they see productivity and improvement on the leased lands, they will then adopt our methods on their own.

We have established connections with people who own land in Madhya Pradesh and who are willing to work with us. We have also established a connection with warehouse owners, fer-tilizer dealers, agro equipment suppli-ers and Government organizations like SFAC and NABARD. The aim is also to increase private sector participation through engagements with the FICCI.

Farming For The Future

Chandra Dubey, founder of Bhushan Agro, has taken a scientific approach to farming. His work, an integral part of which is implementing and promoting best practices developed and tested by

his Guru and CTO, R Madhavan, helps farmers in aggregating land and increasing farm yield.

Photos Courtesy: Chandra Dubey


How does your approach increase incomes of farmers?The three primary levers that help in increasing income are: better farm pro-ductivity, better quality, and introduction of profitable crops like vegetables that increase the revenue margin.

Our employees and the farmers from whom we have leased lands have direct-ly benefited from our project. Regular salaries that we pay to our employees have enabled them to start sending at least one child to a good school. We also help in increasing the skill levels of our employees and motivate them to lead a better life.

From a food security perspective, our thumb rule calculation is that every adult needs 10 kg of cereals every month. By improving farm productivity with two crops, we help in positively impacting food security of eight adults per acre per year. As of today, we have positively impacted food security of approximate-ly 1000 people. We also plan to coach farmers to grow more high value crops like vegetables and fruits. With commu-nity support, we encourage the adoption of a third crop.

How do you plan to grow your work over the next three years? What are some of the risks?We have conducted a knowledge shar-ing workshop and established a connec-tion with farmers in a few villages near-by. We have also visited plots in several areas in Madhya Pradesh and identified huge opportunity to scaling operations. Additionally, we are working to estab-lish partnerships on the ‘input’ side with fertilizer dealers, seed suppliers, agro equipment suppliers, government de-partments and banks so as reduce input costs and help farmers get better access to working capital.

On the market side we are working to establish partnerships with warehouse owners so that farmers can store their produce and sell as the prices go up. When we reach a certain scale then we will work with end customers like retail chains and food processing units as well so that farmers can get better value for their produce. Farmers must also be coached in activities like sorting and grading at their end. This will improve the quality of what they sell and fetch better prices.

The Government is inviting more pri-vate sector participation in agriculture and encouraging initiatives like corpo-rate farming. Hence, the only risk that can stop this project from scaling up is farmers going back on their contracts. To protect us from this, we have to build relationships in the community, govern-ment and police to make it difficult for the farmer to go back on his word. We also need to add value every year so that the farmer sees value in working with us. We know that as long as we help them in increasing their income, most farmers will buy into the initiative.

The real challenge is to derive and devel-op competent resources from a rural set-up. These individuals need to work with an industrial disciple and implement sci-entific methods.

Our business model is such that to reach scale, we need to work with farmers through a collaborative approach. Our work does impact the existing social hierarchy but we will take steps so that broad community support for the proj-ect is established by identifying leaders within communities and working closely with them. We believe that when we are able to show people positive results in agriculture, we gain their trust.

Chandra Dubey is the founder of Bhushan Agro Technologies. He is working towards increasing farm yields through scientific intervention and reduce the economic risks of farming.

fc | INTERVIEW

Photos Courtesy: Chandra Dubey


IIn villages across India, small-scale farm-ers are working long hours to market their produce for a fair price. The mar-ketability of this produce, however, has been minimal and has not promised returns to the farmer to sustain his busi-ness or lifestyle. The reason for this is because value addition in Indian agri-culture is yet to be seen as an important concept in the production process and has not been discussed as a key to un-locking economic opportunity. In India, surveys show that value addi-tion of agricultural produce is less than two percent when compared to other developing nations such as Brazil and Malaysia. Ashoka Fellow, Muthu Ve-layutham, having understood that this was a pressing need that needed to be addressed, started Gram Mooligai Com-pany Limited (GMCL) to help poor communities create value for their pro-duce to foster economic wealth through their business ventures. He began with a deep understanding of migrant farming communities who worked in the semi-ar-id areas of drought-prone villages in Tamil Nadu. ‘For these landless labour-er women, wages and work varied season

to season. In the peak season it will be about 50 rupees, in the lean season it will be only around 20 rupees. So they will save a day’s wage every month and this too varies between groups in the same village,’ he says, ‘Whatever money they save, they use it only for emergencies and buying necessities.’

After studying the pattern in which these landless labourer women work, Muthu approached them with an idea. ‘We noticed that these families tend to wor-ship their ancestors and country deities. This was what created a synergy between them. We decided to build on this trust,’ he said, adding, ‘At first, 58 groups con-tributed around 2000 rupees as a kind of equity from their interest earnings. With that money, we were able to mobilize a bulk loan from mainstream financial in-stitutions like SIBI, regional rural banks and federal banks. We invested in what-ever money from the bulk loan on the regional resource based activities.’ These activities, which included gathering wild, medicinal herbs from tank beds and wastelands, became one of the key eco-nomic drivers of these nomadic migrant labourers.

In India, value addition is not yet seen as an integral concept in farming practices. Ashoka

Fellow, Muthu Velayutham, shares

insights on the importance of value

addition in Indian agriculture.

In Conversation with MEERA VIJAYANN

Higher Value Bigger Profits

Photo courtesy: Kamakshi Sachidanandam

Photo courtesy: mckaysavage


The fundamental need for communities to be able to drive incomes depended on the way they marketed their produce. This brought up the issue of ownership as migrant communities rarely had the time or opportunity to obtain ownership of their produce. In 2002, Muthu decid-ed to tackle this issue by floating Grama Mooligai Company Ltd. (GMCL) as a public limited company and allow these labourer women to partake in the busi-ness actively. ‘We developed a way in which these traditional gatherer women were shareholders. We decided that the group that contributes the maximum business per year will become the stake-holder’, Muthu explained. He also invit-ed help in the form of additional exper-tise from professionals from agriculture, forestry and farming backgrounds to take care of the logistics; in terms of au-thentic supply of the herbs, quality and cleaning, primary grading, and process-ing. He then prepared for the material to be directly taken to the industry from the village without the involvement of middlemen. The direct linkage between producers and consumers through Grama Mooligai helped migrant labourer women estab-lish a solid ground for their communi-ties as it proved economically beneficial. With the intervention increasing at every stage of processing the product, the unit value of each product increased. While this concept of creating value addition is not entirely new, Indian agriculture is still far behind in identifying this as a cru-cial way to maintain the flow of capital in production. With the success of Grama Mooligai Company Ltd., Muthu also ex-panded the organisation’s reach into the ayurvedic health market. He redressed the hierarchal nature of a traditional business by allowing the rural communi-

ties involved in the production process a way to use their skills both at the ground level and the decision-making level. ‘Af-ter the success of the first initiative in 2002 with the women’s self- help group that started these microfinance activities, we re-formed the same families asa farm-er’s producer group. We formed a wider group of primary producers who were involved in the crop phase (i.e. ground-nut growers, cotton farmers and mango farmers) to create an independent or-ganisation. These organisations further became smaller federations which we registered as a poducers’ company. This company gave other small producers the opportunity to engage in production pro-cess. The first value-addition facility was a pulping unit set up for small time man-go farmers who could bring in their ripe fruit and process it into pulp. This helped increase their marketability and promised better economic returns during the peak harvest season. ‘When ripe mangoes are converted into pulp, the product immediately has a shelf life for three more years. During the peak harvest season, the pulp will be of more value as the processing charges can be in-cluded. If mangoes are sold only as fruit, the farmer’s income is limited. If it is converted as a value-added product, they have the ability to sell the product over a longer time,’ Muthu suggests, ‘Several medicinal herbs grow in the mango or-chards. Some of the medicinal herbs are known for growing in a partial stage so we stared cultivating medicinal crops that could also provide a substitute income for the famers.’ Growing a single main crop would not lead to a sustainable live-lihood and therefore, farmers often opt to grow a secondary crop for a substitute income in the off-season.

Through the producers’ company Muthu encouraged farmers who grow various crops to understand the im-portance of value addition. He diversi-fied infrastructure to help include other small-scale traders such as cotton farm-ers. ‘Cotton is more valuable when it un-dergoes a process as its demand is high. Fabric needs to be spun and woven and this helps increase the unit value of the end product,’ he says.

With more value-added products in the market, farmer incomes will be able to access more returns from the main-stream market. Linking the industry with the agriculture sector will also help in market orientation and open tremen-dous opportunities for small-time trad-ers and farmers to help them fit into a more integrated supply chain. However, with the prevailing value system favour-ing high-tech mass production, small producers are often left out in the cold channeling more investment at the grass-root level to help rural communities gain better access to the value system is the solution. Going forward, this could help create the sector become more symbiot-ic and sustainable.

Meera Vijayann has a background in communications and works with the Framework Change team at Ashoka India. She can be reached at [email protected].

We developed a way in which these traditional gatherer women were share-holders. We decided that the group that contributes the maximum business per

year will become the stakeholder

Photo courtesy: Sistak


A Vision For FarmingBy VIJAY PRATAP SINGH ADITYA

How can e-technology help Indian farmers gain better access to services and help shape better farm management? Ashoka Fellow, Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, shares his views.

IIn the near future, a global food crisis is expected to adversely impact our popu-lations if steps are not taken. The world population is set to reach 9 billion by 2050, and already food crises are rede-fining the agriculture sector, with greater interest and investment coming to the sector and governments and multi-later-al agencies coming up with new policies and initiatives to become food secure. While major food producers (mostly in developed countries) are reaching their maximum capacities on production, the world is increasingly looking toward over 1.5 billion small producers, mostly across developing nations. Most of these producers hold less then one hectare of

land. In India smallholder farmers’ land holding shrunk in a decade from 1.7 hectare to 0.72 hectare as per Nation-al Sample Survey Office2, 2003. With property rights and family divisions the land sizes continue to go smaller. These are also amongst the least productive farms, owing to a variety of factors in-cluding lack of advisory, technology and access to resources. Even then, 40 percent of the total food production in the world is done by the small holder farmer.

Most countries do not have specific ICTs for agriculture strategies. Several reports commissioned by agencies like

FAO and IFAD are of the view that e-ag-riculture strategy initiatives have been or are being put in place in countries across the world, however the process has been slow, limiting the impact potential that these technologies can play.

India’s information technology prowess has been world known. However, using ICTs towards development challenges has been limited both due to government apathy and the private sector not finding incentive for investment for applications aimed at sectors like agriculture. At the same time Indian farm productivity is amongst the lowest in the world, supply chain losses are amongst the highest in



Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, is Cofounder and CEO of ekgaon technologies, based in New Delhi, India. Ekgaon provides IT enabled services to under-served communities in rural areas including financial services and agriculture advisory. ekgaon is the 2009 winner of Dell Small Business Excellence Award. Vijay is Ashoka – Lemelson Fellow.

the world, income from agriculture for the household is coming down and the general interest in agriculture is low. If most farmers are not committing suicide under debt burden, they are migrating to cities in search of better employment opportunities. Socially excluded com-munities, particularly those living in trib-al areas and owning small land are the worst affected by the problem. Nearly 70 percent of Indian farmers operate under one hectare of land and are severely re-source constrained, increasing their de-pendence on their crops as major source of livelihood. Land sizes have become so small that gainful employment cannot be sought from them even if farm produc-tivity increases significantly. Livelihood diversification and intensification is the need of the hour. One of India’s top ag-riculture economists, Ashok Gulati has been critical saying that the ‘agriculture extension system has completely col-lapsed in India!’.

There are many reasons for the decline in the growth of agricultural productiv-ity in India such as poor access to irri-gation, soil nutrient (Carbon, Nitrogen, Zinc, Phosphorus) depletion, delays in planting and decrease in solar radiation (Ladha 2003). Besides this, farm exten-sion services are not accessible to small farmers. A number of studies have es-tablished that a marked decrease in soil nutrients has noticeably affected crop yield per hectare (Jagannathan 2010) particularly in regions where monocrops are grown. Imbalanced fertilizer use is the root cause of poor crop yields and poor soil fertility status (Rao 2005). Mi-cronutrient deficiencies in soils are also

emerging as yield-limiting factors. Nutri-ent depletion has major implications for the sustainability of agricultural systems and future food supplies.

E-Technology can help address some of the challenges in agriculture, how-ever it requires a vision for the farming sector with role of ICTs embedded in it. ICTs can play a pivotal role in prima-ry analytics such as weather modeling (and forecasting), soil-nutrient mapping, crop-cycle management, supply chain management and in building efficiency to reduce wastage during storage and transit. One of the area to focus is ensur-ing that the farm extension services reach small and marginal farmers. This is an area where ekgaon works.

ekgaon’s OneFarm platform allows bundling and accessibility of data ser-vices such as weather forecasting, crop management, soil nutrient management, disease alert, market prices, required by small and marginal farmers in text and voice (IVRS & out bound call) formats in local languages. It is a farm advisory solution providing customised, person-alised and localised farm and crop ad-visory services to farmers and helps in increasing productivity while reducing agri-input costs. Utilising crop-specific algorithms, soil-nutrient databases and expert systems for prompting custom-ised advisories and interactive processes for farmers can help them access two way information sharing, utilise farm and nutrient management advisories and crop-weather-disease alerts. An in-teractive voice response system is used to capture the uniqueness of each farm,

based on which the system provides the unique nutrient management solutions and other advisories at timed intervals for that farm by processing the informa-tion received from that farm in real time.

OneFarm’s service mandate is “Healthy Farm & Wealthy Farmer”. In the pro-jected growth phase of five years, the ser-vices could help save over $ 12 per farm-er per crop season (average farm size of 2 acres) in agri-inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) savings, with over 172 million dollars worth of savings and ensuring healthy soil with enhanced farm produc-tivity.This will bring in higher returns on investment to over 15 million farmers. The service aims to help farmers diver-sify their farming with choosing better crops and a wider variety as per market demands, and hence helps increase re-turns from the same farm, while creating a secure market demand for food.

A number of studies have established that a marked decrease in soil nutrients has

adversely affected crop yield per hectare


The challenge of tackling under nutrition is linked with

various sectors. Ashoka highlights some scalable, sustainable

and system-changing solutions for India



IBy ARCHANA SINHA

MissingLinks

Theto the NGO’s water because its water container wasn’t designed for carrying on their head or hip. Further, the monthly allotment of water provided by the NGO was far more than their households’ re-quirements making the affordable fees seem wasteful.

New Lessons on Consumption

Our nutritional status is strongly linked with what we consume and in what form we consume it. Contrary to popular be-lief, income is not the most important determinant of consumption patterns. In 2009, an analysis of NSS data conducted by Jean Dreze and Angus Deaton found that between 1983 and 2004-05 the mean per capita consumption of protein per day declined by 12 percent and 5 percent in rural and urban India respectively, and the mean per capita consumption of fats increased by 31 percent and 28 percent respectively. The per capita expenditure on food increased in both rural and urban areas over this period. This indicates a need to shift dietary choices to more nu-tritious options, which will require behav-ior change communication. A company marketing baby carrots in the US found that packaging and positioning them as snack foods created far more demand than touting their health benefits com-pared to junk foods.

Ashoka Fellows such as Dr. H. Sudar-shan, Indu Capoor, Bablu Ganguly, Seema and Michael Prakash, Bibhu Mohanty, Prasanta Tripathy and Ans-hu Gupta have partnered with us and helped evolve the focus of the Initiative. Fellows such as Armida Fernandez have offered valuable inputs on designing the study and the intervention. We are also partnering with various stakeholders such as CEB for designing and analyzing the data and Biosense for measuring he-moglobin non-invasively.

Our work in the area of nutrition will have an impact on the broader ecosys-tem as well. As adequate nutrition can result in reduced health costs and im-proved productivity, it offers an excellent lever to shift the paradigm of health from the ‘absence of illness’ to the ‘presence of wellness’.

In India, it is estimated that 48 percent of the children below 5 years are un-derweight, compared to 25 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

When the team spoke to various experts and Ashoka Fellows to understand why the problem persists, we learnt that or-ganizations and practitioners in various sectors are unaware of how their work is linked to nutrition. This inhibits them from broadening the scope of their work and from forging collaborations. The need, as we learnt, was to change the lens through which nutrition is viewed.

Sowing the Seeds of Solutions

Farmers’ choices about what to grow and how to grow it determine the availability and quality of nutritious food. For in-stance, an Indian Council of Agricultural Research paper found that the level of zinc in the blood serum of males and fe-males in Rangareddy and east Godavari districts mirrored the soil and plant zinc status of these areas.

Provision of agricultural information services, including soil nutrient manage-ment services, can help increase yields as well as produce more foods with higher nutrient content. For example, Asho-ka Fellows Vijay Pratap Singh and Ved Arya have increased crop yields by 15 percent for rice and 60-80 percent for soyabean by providing information on scientific methods of cultivation.

Retaining and Distributing Nutrition, the Easy Way

Processing of food affects its nutrient lev-el, the ease with which it is consumed the extent to which the body can absorb its nutrients and how affordable it is.

This can be understood in the context of the Indian diet staple, rice. When brown rice is milled, its outer bran layer – which contains vital nutrients - is removed and it is converted to white rice. While both brown and white rice contain similar amounts of carbohydrates and protein, brown rice contains five times the fibre and two times the iron of white rice.

Distribution is another important aspect that affects the availability and affordabil-ity of nutritious food items. The exclu-sion of millets from the Public Distribu-tion System has adversely affected their consumption. See the callout box for more details.

Breaking the Vicious Cycle

Diseases such as diarrhea reduce one’s appetite and the ability to absorb nutri-ents. Children who fall sick due to poor hygiene or lack of access to drinking wa-ter can get pulled into a vicious cycle of undernourishment.

Effective solutions for this are those that involve the community and empathize with their needs rather than simply de-livering services. This is evident from IDEO’s research on why the clean, af-fordable drinking water provided by an NGO near Hyderabad didn’t have enough takers in the community. It found that women were unwilling to switch from their less safe water source

fc | COVER

There is a need to shift the paradigm of health from the ‘absence of

illness’ to the ‘presence of wellness


Archana Sinha leads the Health and Nutrition Initiative at Ashoka India. She has a background in economics and management. She can be reached at [email protected]

Protein (g)

10.6

7.3

12.3

12.5

8.3

7.7

11.2

6.8

11.8

Crop / Nutrient

Pearl millet

Finger millet

Foxtail millet

Proso millet

Kodo millet

Little millet

Barnyard millet

Rice

Wheat

Fibre (g)

0.2

1.2

1.3

3.6

8

2.2

9

7.6

10.1

Minerals (g)

0.6

1.5

2.3

2.7

3.3

1.9

2.6

1.5

4.4

Calcium (mg)

10

41

38

344

31

14

17

27

11

Iron (mg)

0.7

5.3

16.9

3.9

2.8

0.8

0.5

9.3

15.2

Table 1: Nutrient Content of Millets compared to Rice and Wheat Source : Millet Network of India

Millets are nutritionally superior to rice and wheat as shown in the table below. As a result, they are often recommended as a solution to reduce under nutrition in India.

Despite this, the consumption of millets has been declining. Organisations such as The Millet Network of India and M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation attribute this to the exclusion of millets from the Public Distribution System (PDS). Thus, in October 2012, M.S. Swaminathan announced that the proposed National Food Security Bill would widen the PDS food basket beyond rice and wheat to include millets.

In the meantime, the declining demand for millets has resulted in their lower production compared to rice and wheat.

Ashoka Fellow Bablu Ganguly is promoting the cultivation and consumption of millets by providing recipe books on how to cook different kinds of millets. His organization is also experimenting with different kinds of value added products such as ‘ragi malt’ and developing ready-to-cook foods such as millet ‘payasam’ (‘kheer’).

Production (million tonnes)Crop

Rice

Wheat

Jowar

Bajra

Maize

Ragi

Small Millets

95.98

86.87

7.00

10.37

21.73

2.19

0.73

Table 2: All India Estimates of Production of Foodgrains (2010-11)Source: State of Indian Agriculture Report 2011-12


T


CROWDPower of the

By SIMON SCHNEIDER

Even more than with the Internet’s first incarnation in the mid-1990s, the

emergence of ‘Web 2.0’ has led to fundamental changes in how we do

just about everything. The ‘Crowd Web’ has helped to topple governments

and consume companies. Now organizations of

every kind find themselves consulting the Crowd in

order to survive and remain relevant in this century of

revolutions.

The Crowd is a powerful force in philan-thropy, and can be even more so in the future if it is imaginatively embraced by forward-thinking philanthropists. Inno-vators in the fields of philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, such as Asho-ka – with its ChangeMakers programme – are already making interesting and important changes to the way good is done. The programme has a platform where the crowd of social entrepreneurs can post and discover information about projects, engage in collaborative discus-sions to build valuable concepts, and then fund the best ideas, ‘Kickstarter’ style.

Similarly, in 2009-10, InnoCentive, GlobalGiving and the Rockefeller Foun-dation drew upon the Crowd for help in major global water-related challeng-es. The result was the Global Giveback programme, divided into three phases, each representing one of the three major forms of Crowd participation: crowd-sourcing ideas, crowdsourcing solutions and crowdfunding.

Crowdsourcing solutions

The Crowd can be used to find solutions to problems. We have been experiment-ing with engaging the Crowd through a simple but tremendously effective tool: prize competitions. InnoCentive designs ‘Challenges’ to generate new ideas and solve problems of all kinds, typically attracting hundreds (sometimes thou-sands) of participants by awarding cash prizes for winning solutions. Beyond a simple financial exchange, the awarding of a prize is a symbolic act. The prize be-comes a focal point to engage the Crowd

by invoking people’s competitive and inventive spirit. When there is $40,000 (in the case of the Global Giveback) or even $1 million at stake, people feel em-boldened to engage with the problem, where before they didn’t think they had anything to offer.

The results are tremendous:

in the Global Giveback programme, for example, InnoCentive received 335 solution submissions from 2,200 reg-istered participants from around the world. They were motivated to get in-volved both by the obvious importance of the problems and by the challenge and fun of participating. InnoCentive has now run more than 1,500 competitions, which have led to successful outcomes for commercial enterprises, public sector agencies and non-profit organizations. Concurrently, marketing programmes are run both to generate awareness of a particular cause and to attract and en-gage problem solvers. By abstracting the problem, InnoCentive levels the playing field, so that all that matters is the quality and inventiveness of ideas, not a solver’s background, experience or education.

But the results go beyond those figures. Through the Global Giveback, wid-er awareness was raised. Of the prob-lem-solvers that were alerted to the chal-lenges of water purification in Uganda and rainwater harvesting in Kerala, few had any idea of these issues before. The size of the prize fund – $160,000 in to-tal – also helped to draw attention to the Challenge programme and to the associ-ated issues. By creating ‘viral buzz’, In-noCentive’s Challenge programmes help to explore the most obscure and unlikely corners where solutions may be found. Prizes bring out the best in human curi-osity and inventiveness.

Some charities and charitable founda-tions are already discovering the power of the Crowd. Our work with the Rocke-feller Foundation, the Sam Schmidt Paralysis Foundation, BeyondPolio, Prize4Life, Scientists Without Borders and others is testament to the interest these organizations take in crowdsourc-ing work. There is a real opportunity to increase the power of every dollar spent, by looking beyond the financial value of this money to what it can represent for people.

Crowdsourcing ideas

In the first phase, we asked people to identify issues that they cared about. In a way that was inconceivable 20 years ago, ideas were contributed from all over the world (including Bolivia, India and Uganda) – anyone with access to a com-puter was able to bring a local cause to the attention of three large, multinational organizations. The potential for connec-tivity is mind-blowing. We are finally able to ask people, ‘How do you want the world to be?’ or ‘What issues do you care about?’ and be in a position to act on their responses. It is a whole new par-adigm of interaction.

In the case of the Global Giveback, we asked people to identify issues based on an additional criterion: those that can readily be turned into Challenges for In-noCentive’s global network base of over 275,000 problem-solvers to tackle. Ideas were selected on the basis of their appli-cability and potential for impact. With a broad base of sectors represented in our network, the programme was able to em-brace many different ideas.

continued on page 30

Crowdfunding is not just financial – it is symbolic. It demonstrates that people care about an issue.


LLivestock are kept by most farming fami-lies in Africa and Asia, and are often the family’s main asset, source of protein, as well as a means of making money. For very poor families the income they earn from their livestock can lift them out of poverty. It is therefore crucial that farmers are able to protect their livestock against life-threat-ening diseases, as well as have access to good advice and any inputs they need to improve the production and marketability of their stock.

Historically, in Africa, veterinary services were provided free of charge by govern-ment veterinary staff. This changed in the 1990s when these subsidies were with-drawn and government staff numbers cut back. A small private sector emerged with qualified vets and livestock technicians set-ting up shops to sell drugs and offer basic clinical services. However, this emerging private sector is focused on selling prod-ucts to more market-orientated smallhold-er dairy and poultry farmers. Likewise, most commercial suppliers of drugs, feeds or semen for artificial insemination, also focus on the farming areas that have a high-er potential, leaving most livestock keepers poorly served or not served at all.

Regulation of the livestock input sector is also very weak allowing unqualified peo-ple, or ‘quacks’, to open shops selling vet-erinary pharmaceuticals; most of which are counterfeit or under-strength. This leads to

an extensive misuse of drugs through poor diagnosis and mistreatment of disease.

Kenya is well known for its smallholder dairy sector where competition among in-put retailers or `Agrovets’ (both qualified and unqualified) can be intense in the ur-ban centres but even 50 km off the tarmac road, quality products and services can be hard to find. In the dry areas inhabited by nomadic pastoralists and their livestock, services are very sparse indeed. A small number of poorly qualified people often sell smuggled and counterfeit products to people whose very existence depends on livestock. Pastoralists have to travel hun-dreds of miles on poor, or non-existent, roads to find even the most basic of live-stock treatments, for which they are very willing to pay. During periods of drought such as the well-publicised 2011 drought, donor-funded humanitarian interventions include free drug and vaccine distribution. These interventions, while well-meaning, undermine and distort the market for the small number of people struggling to make a living in the private sector and do nothing to build long term service delivery solu-tions.

Sidai Africa Ltd. is a new social enterprise which aims to solve many of the problems described above. Sidai is setting up a na-tional network of at least 150 branded fran-chised Livestock Service Centres across Kenya with the aim of delivering quality

A Sidai Livestock Service Centre

in Narok

By CHRISTIE PEACOCK

Reviving Rural Incomes

Although livestock is a major source of income for poor

families in rural Africa and Asia, few earn enough to lift themselves out of

poverty. Sidai Africa Ltd. is now looking

at an innovative approach to livestock service delivery in rural

Africa.

Photo courtesy: Christie Peacock


products and services to livestock keepers through a sustainable business model. Sid-ai aims to build a brand farmers can trust by working only with qualified people, pur-chasing quality products for the network, and revolutionising the way livestock ser-vices are provided to farmers. In one year, 28 Sidai Livestock Service Centres have been established in the remote North-East as well as the Rift Valley and east of Mt Kenya.

Most franchisees were already in business but see the advantage of being part of a larger network with a trusted brand. Sidai offers franchisees access to: business and technical training; marketing support; fi-nance; quality products at competitive pric-es and innovative new products and busi-ness opportunities. Suppliers find that the Sidai network offers them a well-structured route to market their products. Sidai’s buy-ing power in the market also helps lower prices and improves sales margins.

Sidai Livestock Service Centres have clear and attractive branding and an open-plan supermarket-style layout that is attractive to farmers. Qualified staff make it easy for farmers able to discuss livestock issues and offer quality products at fair and fixed pric-es. Sidai also runs a small number of their own Livestock Service Centres, which act as distribution hubs serving the needs of franchisees in their catchment areas.

Sidai is starting to change veterinary prac-tice and livestock management by empha-sising the prevention of disease rather than treatment. This is, by far, the most cost-ef-fective approach to livestock management and helps to secure the assets of very poor families.

Sidai is already showing that it is possible to deliver quality services to livestock keep-ers in even the most remote locations. The early signs are that it can be done in a finan-cially sustainable way.

Shukre Selese, Sidai Garba Tula

Ashoka Fellow Dr Christie Peacock is the Founder and Chairman, Sidai Africa Ltd, a rapidly growing nationwide network of agro-vet dealers.

Photo courtesy: Christie Peacock

GoingLocalBy OLINA BANERJI

TThe basic premise of Paul Basil’s social enterprise, Villgro, is that innovation is a core strategy to solve the problems that plague society. If the poor of India are still suffering, then whatever’s been tried in the past has not had the desired impact. What Villgro specialises in is bridging the gap between innovation and application: in other words, it’s not just about finding a solution but creating an environment that will employ this idea and do it justice. The focus thus has always been on build-ing access to four crucial areas for new enterprises—talent, knowledge, markets and network. Over 20 fellows have been trained in the social enterprise sector and thousands of young students have been energized to think about innovat-ing for the social sector. In terms of mar-kets, Villgro has built a small network of village stores and village level entrepre-neurs. In terms of access to knowledge, Villgro began to document and analyse innovations and enterprises amongst the poor and the insight helped create a course on innovation and social entre-preneurship with IIT Chennai. Uncon-ventional, a networking platform creat-ed by Villgro, takes the conversation to smaller cities and towns to be closer to innovators from these areas. The simple idea behind it is to take the networking experience outside the usual urban hubs.

In these ways, Villgro is creating a uni-verse where social enterprise isn’t just a good idea. It’s good business too. How-ever working with early-stage entrepre-neurs in the field of rural innovation is often challenging, says Basil. “There are risks in developing these models for rural markets as there are a number of odds.

Paul Basil, Ashoka fellow and co-founder of Villgro enterprises, talks about how the

power of ideas, given the right support and network, can change the face of rural India.


Photo courtesy: Michael Foley


We’re in an early stage of ecosystem building and there are odds against re-cruiting talent, accessing capital and building processes and systems,” he adds. Once formalized, however, Basil believes that the sector will churn out new ideas and role models in a more sus-tainable fashion. “It will take some time but a group of committed entrepreneurs can tip the balance,” says Basil. Two companies that Basil is particularly excited by are Biosense and Promethean Power Systems (see box). Biosense has developed a non-invasive device which uses light to monitor iron levels in ane-mic, pregnant women. If a deficiency is detected it can be treated early and re-duce the chances of maternal and infant mortality. Promethean power systems, on the other hand, have created a rap-id milk chilling technology, which chills milk at the village level itself and creates a profitable cold chain for the farmer. It improves the shelf life of the milk and farmers get a better share of the con-sumer’s rupee. In general, the preferable areas of investment and innovation in rural businesses are now health and ed-

ucation, and less focused on agriculture. Soulspeak for the Dreamers Many early stage entrepreneurs, says Basil, are too star struck with their idea. “What I find challenging is that peo-ple are often very obsessed about their solution, as opposed to understanding customer insights. They need to distill what the customer wants with clarity. Right now, there isn’t enough focus on that and as a result entrepreneurs are not able to build compelling solutions,” says Basil. In addition to keeping their ear on the ground, Basil also suggests that more knowledge platforms need to be created for these entrepreneurs to help them bridge the gap between what they already know from experience and what they need to know to run their social en-terprise.

“The advantage of these knowledge ini-tiatives for the sector is that it helps in the spread of ideas. The challenges we face in this sector are herculean, and there is space yet to for more ideas to inspire and multiply.”

The Way Forward | Paul Basil talks about the direction that the sector should take: 1. There is a need to plug the “pioneer gap” (a term from Monitor Group’s report: From Blueprint to Scale) – this is

the ecosystem of activities to inspire social entrepreneurs and support them through the first 2-3 years.

2. Plugging the pioneer gap involves supporting players performing the following activities: Inspiring social entrepreneurship – programs that connect with, educate and inspire potential social entrepreneurs – in colleges, entrepreneurship clubs (e.g., TiE), through social organizations, advocacy through the media, social networking, etc. Helping quality talent make the transition to social entrepreneurship – through knowledge sharing sessions, networking opportunities, Entrepreneur-in-Residence / Fellowship programs, etc.

3. Pre-incubation programs that help social entrepreneurs refine their ideas and make them investment ready by giving them knowledge through classroom sessions, small amounts of capital for field testing of ideas, and high-touch mentoring.

4. Seed and Early stage capital providers that provide entrepreneurs with appropriate amounts of capital to help them focus on executing their business plan and hitting critical milestones.

5. In the Seed/Early stage it is critical that these providers give entrepreneurs more than just capital – they need high-touch mentoring from someone who spends 2-3 days / month with the entrepreneur.

6. Access to talent – support initiatives that help social enterprises find talent, volunteers, etc. through fellowships, network of potential employees (jobs bank), network of service providers. Access to facilities – support initiatives that provide early stage social entrepreneurs with access to facilities to develop their products, such as labs, small-lot-size fabrication facilities, test environments, etc.

Olina Banerji has a background in communications and works with the Framework Change team at Ashoka India. She can be reached at [email protected].

What I find challenging is that people are often very obsessed about their solution, as opposed to understanding customer insights.

W


f of the aceIndian Farmer

The

By RICHA GOVIL and GARIMA RANA

What is the most popular profession for women in India?

The correct answer, contrary to popular belief, is agriculture. In India, 67 percent of women who work are employed in the agriculture sector. And that number is nearly 83 million. They plant crops, take care of them, weed, harvest and carry out post-harvest processing. They also look after seed storage and treatment for the next cycle. They take care of animals, feed them, milk them and grow them for meat.

About double this number of men, 142 million, are also engaged in agriculture. Men do more of the ploughing, buying of inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, spraying of insecticides and marketing (selling) of the produce.

What is even more interesting is that, ac-cording to the NSSO1, 40 percent, which is more than a half of all farm manual labour in terms of person-days, is provid-ed by women. Yet, when we imagine the face of a farmer, the image that comes to mind is that of a man.

A majority of government and civic sec-tor programs targeting farmers are de-signed by men, keeping men in mind. For instance, 9 million women are en-gaged in livestock and comprise of 72 percent of the livestock workforce. In cultivation, women do all the activities except ploughing, contributing up to 50

percent of labour for activities such as weeding.

Women are more likely to grow vegeta-bles and subsistence crops. A woman’s engagement is higher in detail-oriented work and manual activities done with hands. One would typically find an en-hanced role for women in agricultural activities in households where men have migrated to cities or other villages.

Access to Information

As per the FAO (Food and Agricul-ture Organisation), per hectare yields of women farmers are about 30 percent lesser than male farmers, primarily be-cause of lack of access to resources such as information, finance, irrigation, etc. One of the critical resources that can dis-proportionately impact farm productiv-ity is information about inputs, farming practices and markets.

In India, only 40 percent of farmers receive information from any source such as other farmers, radio, extension programs etc. Women, who are mostly small landholder farmers, are 50 percent less likely to receive information from extension workers and other sources.

There are various reasons for this. First-ly, women farmers have limited mobility owing to social norms. According to a study conducted in rural Karnataka, only

Why should Indian farming take into account the efforts of women? Ashoka finds out about the missing workforce in Indian agriculture.

Garima Rana works with the RIF (Rural Innovation and Farming) Program at Ashoka India and can be reached at [email protected].

Richa Govil leads the RIF (Rural Innovation and Farming) Program at Ashoka India and has extensive experience working with businesses owned by or interfacing with urban and rural poor. She can be reached at [email protected].

Photo courtesy: Arjun Swaminathan


fc | OPINION


40

percent of farm labor is provided by women (person-days)

TRING! TRING!Information services that cover activities typically done by women must reach women. Providers of high quality agricultural information services are shifting towards usage of mobile phones and ICT kiosks.

However, women’s access to these technologies is limited. While the household penetration of mobile phones is about 50 percent in rural India, often households own only a single phone for the primary male member. Women’s access to these phones is limited to certain times of the day.

Women’s access to ICT kiosks is limited by prevalent local norms relating to interaction between men and women, restrictions on women’s mobility as well as time availability for trips.

Ashoka research shows that mobile-based information services can be made gender responsive by timing messages and calls to the time of the day when women have access to mobile phones or by identifying women who own mobile phones and can disseminate information during an SHG meetings.

40 percent of women are allowed to travel alone to any local market and 50 percent of women to any place outside their community. Secondly, women in rural India have severe time constraints. NSSO data shows that women have only 5 hours on a daily basis to engage in eco-nomic activities against men who have 8 hours, as women have to take care of household chores which includes fetch-ing water. Thirdly, women in most parts of India generally do not interact with men outside of their families because they are culturally prohibited to do so. Literacy is another major constraint that challenges a woman’s access to informa-tion.

With all these constraints, it is no won-der that most of the information services projects (whether based on agri-services centers, extension workers or technolo-gy/kiosks) take the relatively easier route of catering only to male farmers.

Women also need information and ac-cess to tools for their work. For exam-ple, while harvesting, for every kilogram of grain produced in the process of de-husking maize cobs, a female worker uses her fingertips 522 times, her finger-nails 144 times and her palms 55 times1. Simple solutions such as a finger guards can be of great help.

Leveraging Self Help Groups and Collectives

Some Ashoka fellows have developed simple yet effective solutions. For in-stance, programs initiated by Ashoka Fellows Ved Arya and Rikin Gandhi leverage Self Help Groups (SHGs) structures and processes to provide cul-tivation and livestock information, as do organizations such as Himalayan Action Research Center (HARC). By leverag-ing SHG systems, these programs over-come many of the challenges in reaching women.

The women, armed with better knowl-edge, become influencers in their house-hold decisions about the correct practic-es for seed preparation, planting, care/ disease prevention, etc. By taking the women farmers for exposure visits to wholesale markets, produce and milk collection centers, these organizations are able to instill confidence in their new knowledge and speed up their learning.

Limited Role in Decision Making

Despite providing 40 percent of agri-la-bour, when it comes to decision making, a womens’ role diminishes dramatically. A review of studies from different states shows that 0-8 percent of women report making decisions regarding purchase of inputs, crop management or sale of pro-duce.

Photo courtesy: Michael Foley


And when it comes to financial trans-actions, their role is next to zero. The chart below shows this disconnect be-tween women’s contribution to the la-bour force and their empowerment in terms of decision making.

Earning in one’s own name

Starved of proper recognition for their work, women often play the role of an unpaid farm labourer (see graph above). Organizations that work with women make sure that all records and receipts are issued in the name of the women, even for cultivation activities where in-comes are clearly a result of combined effort. By deliberately giving them recog-nition this way, organizations like Srijan attempt to highlight the effort that wom-en put into contributing towards house-hold income.

Such efforts have shown dramatic im-pact on social norms in a short period of time. Women who we met in Uttara-khand talked about how they can now speak their minds with confidence within their households. Women in Rajasthan described how they now drive decisions

about soyabean cultivation. Taking more expedient routes to agriculture initiatives would certainly have improved incomes for these families, but would have missed a great opportunity to bring about recog-nition of women’s contribution to that income, and bring about societal change in women’s stature.

These household level changes have a multiplier effect and impacted so-cial norms. In Rajasthan, women are breaking rules to send their daughters to school.

The Opportunity

Ashoka sees a huge opportunity in ad-dressing the gender gap in agriculture – to connect the 83 million women farm-ers with better access to information and other resources through gender respon-sive and transformative programs.

This is an audacious goal, but we can be-gin with acknowledging women’s contri-bution to agriculture and designing better programs to not only meet their different needs but also enable them to become changemakers in their own society.

11 times

the impact

It only takes an increase of $10 in women’s income to achieve the same improvement in children’s nutrition and health as an increase of $110 in men’s income

Para vets: Pashu SakhiLivestock is the highest contributor to India’s agriculture GDP growth and has been accepted by the 13th five year plan as the engine of agricultural growth. Nearly 60 percent of the women engaged in livestock belong to households with no land. National level data shows that rural poverty is less in states where livestock contributes more to farm income.

About 72 percent of the farmers engaged in livestock cultivation are women. Livestock produce such as milk and eggs are used for consumption, with surplus sold for supplementary income. Animals are considered as assets which can be sold by the household in need of quick cash.

Srijan, an organization founded by Ved Arya, recognized the twin problems of low yields and livestock mortality. In an attempt to address those, they started a ‘pashu sakhi’ program by identifying a dozen local female livestock keepers and training them on proper animal care and feeding practices. These trained female para vets lead by example and also proactively educate other women in their village to practice proper care and feeding of their animals. They are also trained on providing basic medication such as for de-worming. Para vets get paid a small remuneration by Srijan for some specific activities undertaken such as the number of vaccinations. This program has made a significant dent in mortality in the villages covered.

These household level changes have a multiplier effect and impacted social norms. In Rajasthan, women are breaking rules to

send their daughters to school.


Despite technological advances, why isn’t the

agri-business sector evolving to accommodate the

aspirations of rural youth?

By MEERA VIJAYANN

Paving the Road Ahead


IIndia’s agricultural economy has wit-nessed a sea change in the past decade. With a fast-growing economy that is backed by technological advances across sectors, there has been a paradigm shift in how agriculture is both viewed and engaged with. Private investment, by and large, has helped fill loopholes where government schemes have failed; in terms of farming needs and methods. As a result, traditional agricultural practices have structurally adapted to give way to a fresh inflow of international finance, new talent and best practices among farming communities across India.

Devi Murthy, co-founder of Kamal Kisan, which provides solutions for farmers, is of the view that despite this agri-business is still not a popular choice among youth. ‘Most farmers’ children don’t want to be farmers anymore. The profession is con-sidered to be non-profitable, but more importantly, the grass on the other side seems to be green. Every farmer wishes for his son to live in the city, work in a big corporation, own a car, laptop and a fancy apartment,’ she says, ‘The Ameri-can dream as it seems has now become every Indian farmers’ dream too’. How-ever, Devi recounts meeting with sever-al young, enterprising men and women at an agri-business workshop. ‘Ramesh, a dentist, I met at the training said “my family owns a piece of land outside the city and we have been renting it out to local farmers every year. I feel now, that it is time to get my own hands dirty and I am here to learn about newer technol-ogies in agriculture to make agriculture a lucrative career,’ she adds.

Muthu Velayutham, who has worked extensively in semi-arid regions around Madurai, helps add a little perspective to Devi’s argument about prospects for rural youth who wish to venture into farming. ‘In terms of prospects for rural youth to enter into the agri-business sec-tor, it dependably solely on the kind of investment that they are able to make, as well as the manual labour available in the villages. Rural youth definitely do have a future in agri-business but they have to weigh their skills. Providing agri-business services will be valuable and has scope as

these facilities are not available in most villages,’ he says. This argument holds true in the case of Indian agriculture and is supported by various Indian agricul-ture experts as well. The emerging trend is to combine entrepreneurial expertise with existing schemes under the govern-ment.

In general, the sector holds promise for young entrepreneurs. Rahul Gala, the brainchild of Jalbindu Argi Tech is a good example. Having developed a com-puter-aided technology that in turn feeds data into a system to irrigate this field, he has ventured into the rather hazy world of agri-business depending solely on his technological skills. Using not only an unconventional method to increase the efficiency of the supply chain but by turn-ing mere commodities into value-added products have helped Rahul Gala create a niche for himself in the agri-business sector.

Every farmer wishes for his son to live in

the city, work in a big corporation, own a car, laptop and a fancy apartment

It is this that Devi suggests that youth must identify with. ‘What is it that makes urban Indian sit up and take notice of agriculture, while a majority of the rural population strives to make its way into the cites? The answer could very easily be that urban youth these days bring in a newer perspective. With the adoption of new variety of crops, technologies and cultivation practices these young next generation farmers are not only able to create a profitable venture, but also be-come agents of change themselves,’ she says, ‘As an entrepreneur, who is working towards entering the agricultural equip-ment market myself, learning about such paradigm shifts being bought about by other such young entrepreneurs is in-deed inspirational and encouraging.’

Jayaram Venkatesan, Director at Ma-gasool, a non-profit initiative that con-centrates on industry innovations and provides agricultural services for farm-ers says, ‘Today, the biggest issue is not technology or innovation, but rather how to take innovations that already exist to the farmer. Over the past few years, one trend that we have noticed is that rural youth are moving away from agriculture because it hasn’t proved a viable career. We see rural youth opt for other industry-related occupations such as construction that are more eco-nomically profitable for them.’ His ob-servations are not without conviction. In recent years, there has been a steady decline in agricultural productivity. Ru-ral India only has a historical annual growth rate of about 2.5 percent. Agri-culture-industry linkages add to nagging problems such as the lack of services, information and innovation in the agri-culture sector.1

Driving youth towards agriculture re-mains a challenge that few have ad-dressed. Jayaram suggests that it is best to intervene in areas that have scope for scale and a promise of economic returns. ‘If rural youth are to be at-tracted to agriculture, we need to look at areas which are viable. For instance, bringing the latest technology to the field is a pressing need today. Similarly, producing organic manure for farmers is another profitable area. The focus should be on a product or service for which there is a huge demand and no supply. Value-addition is profitable as well,’ he says.

On a broad level, there are not enough subsidies that young farmers need to start small-scale businesses of their own. Furthermore, the lack of proper infrastructure adds to the problem for producers. While the challenges of the present system are many, it is safe to understand that the agri-business sector is evolving and opening up new areas for rural youth to explore and leverage their skills. The key is to identify the exact loopholes in the sector and work towards creating the linkages that are missing.

fc | AGRI BUSINESS


By AYESHA VEMURI

The Two Types of Disruptive Innovation

The term ‘Disruptive Innovation’ is often loosely thrown around, many times wrongly assigned to a product innovation that is simply cheaper, better, faster or more con-venient than an existing product. According to Clayton Christensen, who coined the term, disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors. And that, to me, is the critical distinguishing characteristic of disruption – its displacement of existing market leaders.

When the new product addresses a mar-ket that wasn’t previously served (New Market Disruption), thereby creating and opening up previously non-existent markets. For example, Google Adwords opened up an entirely new market for small-scale advertising. When large advertising platforms like Yahoo were charging between $5,000 and $10,000 for banner ads Google introduced much smaller ads for as little at $1. This opened up the market for small business-es who don’t usually have an advertising budget, to begin using this service. This was a segment of the market that hadn’t previously been catered to by existing market leaders. As the success of Google AdWords became apparent, even larger businesses shifted over, while platforms like Yahoo spiraled into invisibility.

When the new product is a cheaper, simpler, faster or more convenient alter-native to an existing product (Low-End Disruption). In this case, the target cus-tomers are usually unprofitable for the existing market leader, and the big com-panies are happy to lose them. Several examples of this kind of disruption are everyday products today, like the digital camera (disrupting earlier film-depen-dent cameras as well as video cameras), mobile phones (disrupting land-line phones), and even Wikipedia (disrupt-ing encyclopedias, which were tradition-ally protected and available only to a se-lect audience). When each of these was first introduced to the market, it had a

certain crudity, or offered far fewer ser-vices and usability than the established company. Although these innovations were dismissed initially as competitively irrelevant, each acquired a portion of the market because they offered consumers performance that satisfied their basic needs at a price far below what they were paying for capabilities they did not want.

Developing Disruptive Innovations But even if one understands these basic qual-ifications of a disruptive innovation, how does one actually develop a disruptive innovation? A recent article by Andy Ra-chleff on Techcrunch talks about how it is business models, not products, that are disruptive. He writes:

People sometimes say a technology is disruptive. It’s more appropriate to call the business model disruptive. In order for a company to disrupt, the revenue and cost structure of the incumbents that the company faces must keep them from responding. It’s easy for other companies to add Kayak-like technology to existing products. The business model, not the technology, usually determines whether it is uneconomic for the incumbent to pursue the disruptor.

If you apply this model of disruption to past fads, you can predict with incredible reliability which products turn into long-term successful businesses and which ones don’t.

really meansdisruptive innovationWhat

A better product isn’t necessarily disruptive: A new product may be disruptive, but not always. It cannot be

considered disruptive if it is simply an alternative

take on an existing product


Rachleff also tries to demystify several widely accepted ‘facts’ about disruptive innovation, including:

Disruptive products don’t have to be cheaper: This is an important point, and one that Indian innovators would do well to learn fast, since so many attempts at innovation here still focus on making existing products cheaper for less affluent consumers, sacrificing quality on the way (think Tata Nano). Oftentimes, consumers are willing to pay – and even pay more – for a product that offers better usability and greater value than its competitors or predecessors. I think of Whatsapp – the social messaging app that was once free but is now paid for – which chose to charge users for their excellent service rather than looking to advertisers for their revenue. Whatsapp is one of the most successful and most widely used apps and its penetration has been unaffected by the cost.

Low-end disruptions are usually inferior: Many lower-end innovations come about in response to a market that requires a cheaper product with less functionality than what the market leader currently offers. Why pay substantially more for a product that has features you’ll never use when you can get the basic functionality from something much cheaper? Take Wikipedia once again – articles may be less factual than many would wish, but nonetheless, a lot of information is

available freely, not only about the lim-ited material that would make its way into a proper encyclopedia, but about a much wider gamut of social and cultural happenings. And this, ultimately, has be-come more valuable to a large part of the Wikipedia audience.

A better product isn’t necessarily disrup-tive: A new product may be disruptive, but not always. It cannot be considered disruptive if it is simply an alternative take on an existing product – for exam-ple, the Mahindra Reva is a great new car, but does not solve the problem of congested traffic in our cities, or serve consumers who cannot afford or use cars for their daily travel. Similarly, a new product or service isn’t disruptive if the market leader can respond and provide that same product or service. For exam-ple, as Rachleff writes,

Kayak went public a few months ago and is thought by many to be disruptive. While it’s a better service than alternative travel sites, it is not disruptive by the Christensen definition, because it is not uneconomic for the incumbents to respond (and many have).

In conclusion, I’d like to end with the question of whether Indian entrepre-neurs have truly been disruptive in their innovations or not. Examples and stories of disruptive innovation in India are wel-come.

Demystifying Disruption

fc | DESIGN BLOG

Photo Courtesy: Nesster

Ayesha Vemuri is responsible for thought leadership and outreach efforts at Centre for Knowledge Societies.


Simon Schneider is head of InnoCentive EMEA Ltd.

Email [email protected]

*This article originally appeared in the Alliance Magazine on 1 March 2013.

Prize4Life, a charity seeking to find a cure for Lou Gehrig’s disease (a rare neurodegenerative disease that has received very little attention), put up more than $1 million to find a disease biomarker in order to reduce the cost of clinical trials. A number of discovery prizes were awarded to solvers, including a plant biologist and a dermatologist with no prior experience of working with the disease.

Ultimately, the $1 million prize was awarded in early 2011 to Dr Seward Rutkove, a neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, for his biomarker discovery.

Crowdfunding

The foundations that InnoCentive has been working with have also come to see the power of crowdfunding, the process whereby the Crowd, either spontaneous-ly or through an organized mechanism, pools its money to support a given purpose. The internet has enabled the establishment of platforms for peer-to-peer funding, where individuals can ac-cess good causes and contribute small amounts. This has proved to be a great help for organizations around the world to reach funding goals, even when they have limited resources.

GlobalGiving, InnoCentive’s partner for the Global Giveback programme, is a leading internet-based network for peer-to-peer philanthropy. Its platform facil-itates giving from anywhere to anyone, with the knowledge that the donation will be direct and little will be wasted on administrative costs.

This powerful partnership between a pioneer in crowdsourcing and a pioneer in crowdfunding helped to add value to the donors, and to the receivers of priz-es, as well as allowing the programme itself to gain valuable support from other sources. When it came to funding the implementation of the prize winners in the final phase – this is where the help of GlobalGiving was crucial to the suc-cess of the programme – the Rockefeller Foundation match-funded every dona-tion. This was a simple but effective way of capturing and acknowledging the in-terest shown by the Crowd in these proj-ects. The match-funding initiative also helped to draw attention to the projects and to increase the amount of money received.

As with other transactions undertaken with the Crowd, crowdfunding is not just financial – it is symbolic. It demonstrates that people care about an issue. Before the advent of the Crowd as a significant global force, it was difficult to find a good gauge of people’s interest in a cause or issue. Now, with the help of GlobalGiv-ing and similar platforms that help peo-ple access and fund projects on a peer-to-peer basis, we can better understand and quantify how much causes matter to people. When a cause attracts attention, perhaps through a Grand Challenge programme or more simply through

In the Global Giveback programme, for

example, InnoCentive received 335 solution

submissions from 2,200 registered participants from around the world.

They were motivated to get involved both by the obvious importance of the problems and by the challenge and fun

of participating.

YouTube hits, the internet provides a number of excellent channels to track this growing interest. When this infor-mation is available, big players start to listen. And very quickly the dollars con-tributed by individuals represent a pow-erful force in themselves, and lead the way to unlocking greater funding from governments, large corporations or high net worth individuals. The Crowd does not keep its interest in causes a secret; foundations would greatly benefit from being able to digest and fully use this (often easily available) information, and start to catch the tail-wind of large, popu-lar movements for good causes.

The value of the Crowd to philanthro-py is apparent at all levels of charitable work. The individual is able to influence their world with a financial gift – but the real change will come when organi-zations can understand these internet collectives, and how to engage and mo-bilize them to place their own stamp on the marketplace of good. That is, in un-derstanding what motivates individuals, charities and foundations will be better placed to mobilize the Crowd and cap-ture the benefits that come from having it on their side.

continued from page 17


Ashoka Future Forum will bring together Ashoka’s powerful network of Fellows, business entrepreneurs, youth leaders, investors, policy makers and media to collaborate and commit to collectively transforming the future. With nearly 300 Fellows attending, it will be India’s largest gathering of social entrepreneurs.

Ashoka Future Forum will be built on the principals of peer learning and exchange, co-creation, multi-sectoral dialogue and focus on solutions. Following this princi-ples the Forum will cover:

• Sharing best practices and cutting edge solutions: Including dialogues on measuring what matters, building 2nd line leadership, developing exit strategies, incorporating feedback loops, creating roles for citizens and expanding through networks etc.

• Challenging existing frameworks: In-vestors pitch to social entrepreneurs, workshops on behaviour architec-ture, design thinking and using data for change, dialogues on the alter-native paradigms of governance and political entrepreneurship, etc.

• Demolishing the boundaries be-tween business, media and social sec-tors and building collective vision for the Future: Regulatory frameworks for social enterprises, Changemaking Cities, Universities and Companies, New Culture of Philanthropy and CSR etc.

• Collaborative Circles is a time and space at the Future Forum for Fel-lows to create their own collaborative teams and discussions. Any partici-pant can create or join the dialogue.

Ashoka Future Forum

June 27-29, 2013Infosys Campus | Pune | India

THE FUTURE FORUMREGISTER TODAY FOR

*Registration is only open for Ashoka Fellows. For more details follow https://india.ashoka.org and join Ashoka Fellows group on Facebook.

The High FiveThe five things that gave us a high.

The Omnivore's Dilemma - A non-fic-tion book that helps us understand food choices in society today.

Wasteland - An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit.

Design Thinking for Social Innovation - How can we use design tools to fix complex problems around the world? http://www.ideo.com/by-ideo/design-thinking-for-social-innovation-in-stanford-social-innovation-review

What the World Eats - How do families around the world shop and prepare their meals? Here’s a wonderful insight.

Dan Palotta - Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta tells us that the way we think about charity is dead wrong. ” Watch: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html

If you have any questions please write to Ira Snissar at [email protected]

fc | RECOMMENDS

THE right CONNECT Olina Banerji in conversation with ASHMEET KAPOORA However, like many social entrepreneurs of his

generation, 26-year-old Kapoor is a self-con-fessed convert. His journey began convention-ally and like most other children who did well at school, he took up engineering. Intrigued with the idea of creating a business, he harboured that dream over joining his father’s construc-tion business. “I was interested in working with renewable energy, but my initial target was the for-profit sector. If someone was to ask me a couple of years ago what my “5-year plan” was, organic food and agriculture would be nowhere on the list,” says Kapoor. His entrepreneurial vision however began to take shape early and he recognised the need to channel it better.

Kapoor spent time in a slew of start-ups, alter-nating between work and school. It was, as he claims, the ‘turning point’ as he began to see immense value in the social sector. Then, Ka-poor packed his bags and returned to India to, “travel and spend time in rural areas to figure out what really needs to be done,” he adds.

This trip around the country, the people he met and the knowledge they lent him about their lives and hardships changed Kapoor’s vi-sion of development. He then, quite literally, dug into the problem. He leased a small piece of land to start a demo farm in the eastern UP district of Deoria and developed it personally for six months. He learnt quickly, from his own experience and that of other farmers, that organic agriculture was the only sensible way forward.

I Say Organic’s success, claims Kapoor, is not that it incentivized farmers to go organic. There were many other grassroot organizations doing that well. But the growth of domestic organic market was slow. What Kapoor created was demand. By putting producers in touch with consumers, and spreading awareness about the benefits of organic produce, he ensured that one end of the chain was tied up. At the oth-er end, the challenge was to find “trustworthy and like-minded farmers” who could be sup-pliers. ” After several round of discussions with farmers and narrowing down to a list of viable suppliers, I Say Organic began online selling of organic produce to customers in Delhi with just a click of a button.

Still in its nascent stages however, the non-per-ishable organic food chain is complicated and the market size smaller. I Say Organic is also dealing with twin problem of pricing their prod-ucts competitively and ensuring high quality stan-dards. “Our next steps are to include dry goods and other groceries in our portfolio, double our customer base from what it is now, and analyze future growth options like launching physical re-tail stores. Along the way, I would like to support other organizations who are trying to set up or-ganic markets in their areas,” Kapoor says.

Where did it stem from—this need to make good of his skills as an entrepreneur? “Even when I was a lot younger, I felt there were too many disparities in the world and the environ-ment is something I’ve always cared about,” Kapoor signs off.

Ashmeet Kapoor begins his story with a disclaimer. “I’ve never had anything to do with farming,” says the young entrepreneur. It’s hard to believe since Kapoor, at 26, has started his own organic food retail venture I Say Organic. While he may sound like he’s part of the new wave of urban cool, addressing the needs of the elite few, his business model, upon a closer a look, is one that addresses the needs of the future.

Kapoor is attempting to change the way we eat. Like our politics, methods of re-cycling and our businesses, he’s creating food that’s sustainable. By forging a direct link between the farmer and the consumer, Kapoor’s two-year-old venture is creating more organic households in Delhi and NCR everyday. “The idea is to cater to all the food needs of an Indian household organically,” he says. By creating a viable, convenient distribution channel through which organic produce is grown, market-ed and sold at affordable prices, Kapoor has cut down on the perennial problem of a middleman. His venture I Say Organic doesn’t only focus on a distribution mod-el—it also equally benefits the farmers who take the leap of faith with organic farming and pays them almost 20 per cent above par for the food they grow.

'For more stories from the Changemakers Series log on to http://india.ashoka.org'

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