“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 …

Indian farmers face significant challenges in agriculture - fragmentation of land ownership, increased cost of cultivation, deteriorating soil health, uncertain market spaces. In addition to this, climate change is a major threat. It seems there is no end to the hurdles that the humble Indian farmer must jump over.

When it comes to key stakeholders in agriculture and rural development in India, there is no bigger player than NABARD who, with a 7, 50,000 crore balance sheet, are a primary investor in the revitalisation of rural India. It makes sense then, for Ambuja Foundation to work closely with them – after all, both organisations are working towards the same vision – rural prosperity!

Ambuja Foundation joins hands with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) for the implementation of Watershed Development projects in Mandi District of Himachal Pradesh. Owing to Ambuja Foundation’s successful past experience in the field of Watershed Development in Solan under CSR mode where Ambuja Foundation is implementing 9 watershed projects, NABARD has now selected the Foundation to support farmers in the Mandi region – improving their production and livelihood.

India is the largest cotton producer in the world, with 5. 8 million farmers making a living from the crop, along with millions of people who work in the sector. But in the past the industry has had a bad name, labelled as one that ‘consumes too much and produces too little’ – too much water, too much pesticide, and low productivity per hectare.