“Bananas are thirsty – drinking almost 50% of water as you grow them! In this water parched area I used to spend Rs.45,000 on electricity for pumping water and on labour – and the bananas were awful!

"I was completing my graduation and had my sights set on a government job when my father passed away and our family fell into financial crisis. Being an educated person, what would people say if I simply join agriculture? But with no other choice at the time, I thought let me put my mind to good use in farming and support my family of 9.

‘Farming is a family business and we all get involved – in fact, we live as part of khiryati Dhaani where almost 30 families live and work together in close proximity. We used to grow maize but found it tough to survive, so I would work as a labourer on other farms in the district.

"Once upon a time, I used to lease this field out to another farmer, as I just felt there was no money to be earned in rice. I concentrated my efforts on vegetables and goat/cow rearing to keep food on the table. But after learning about the System of Rice Intensification, I changed my mind. I thought – let me try my hand at this and see if I can make it work.

“We used to grow maize on our land but life was hard and it just never delivered the returns. I learnt about poly-house cultivation and took a chance – building a 4000 sq.mt. house complete with drip irrigation and solar pump. Everyone thought I was mad – me just a housewife and with no experience in farming.

“It was a bitter pill to swallow - I was 59. I'd just retired. And was broken.

Since childhood, I saw my father struggling to make agriculture profitable. I was very sure that I could do better. That with my hard work and skill, I’d earn more. But somehow, it never happened …

“In West Bengal, Mandals are known to be cultivators. So despite earning my trade as an electrician at ITI, I turned to the 30-acre family farm to work hard and build a business.

"My heart used to weep seeing my husband struggling to earn a decent income from his crop. And it wasn’t just him. The local moneylenders and middlemen were making farmers’ lives in our village miserable. I wanted to help, but how? I had never even stepped out of the house ever before!

Hem Raj, a 37 year old farmer, faced one big obstacle in his farming enterprise – getting his produce to market! With no road out of his village, the only way to sell goods, was to ‘walk it out’ – loading produce into baskets that they lugged up hills to the nearest bus stand. It was back breaking work and by the time they reached the market, produce was severely damaged.

The young farmers of Una block in Gujarat, are on a mission. They have united in their effort to turn their farming enterprises around, creating new opportunities for their members and enhancing profits along the way, by forming the Dhanvantri Farmer Producer Company.

When an NGO talks about its various programmes and models of intervention, they often paint the bigger picture of the tangible results, the work as it exists today, and the impacts being made on lives. Rarely do we get the back story – the story of the evolution of the programme and how it came to be in the first place …