Think Different - A Sugarcane farmer who built a Natural Farming community through Jaggery

A farmer is a man of his habits and traditions, but unfortunately, one of the habits also includes blindly following others. Sugarcane is one of the largest crops of South Gujarat, and for decades, farmers have been cultivating and sending their crops to adjacent Sugar factories. These factories used to bring fortune to farmers before, but with years of mismanagement, they are now the biggest hindrance in getting farmers the returns they deserve.

In this article, we will briefly tell the story of Amitbhai Patel from Pasodara, Surat, who was able to think outside of the box and was successfully able to get out of this cycle. Amitbhai has been growing sugarcane on his ten bigha farm for more than a decade but recently discovered the Natural Farming movement spearheaded by Padma Shree Subhash Palekar, also known as Subhash Palekar Natural Farming (SPNF). Being an enthusiastic and curious farmer, he decided to try it. He was already upset with the returns he was getting from sugar factories. It was a massive risk for him to change the complete direction with an economic impact on his family. To his surprise, he yielded 50% more crops than he usually achieved using traditional chemical fertilizers. Moreover, his sugarcane was of very high quality, and he felt selling it back to the sugar factory would be a massive disservice to the sweat he invested. Breaking from the mold, he decided to make the highest quality natural jaggery. He was able to produce more than 8 tons of jaggery from just ten bigha farm, which itself was something he never expected.

At this stage, Titodi Bazaar platform came into the picture. Being a farmer, Amitbhai's skills and focus was on producing the best sugarcane and jaggery, but selling it to traditional vendors and getting a regular price would be another disaster. Amitbhai created an online store on Titodi, Vraj Prakrutik Farm, and with the help of a simple and easy-to-use platform, he could share and sell jaggery directly to consumers online.

As other farmers in the surrounding village saw Amitbhai's success, he was able to grow his experiment into a movement. He was able to onboard and convince many farmers to walk on his path. This year, he expects to produce at least 35 tons of natural jaggery. With the help of Titodi Bazaar platform, he feels confident that he will be able to sell it online, with satisfying customers he already made and others that are reaching out to him from word of mouth publicity. At Titodi, we are working to deliver samples of his natural jaggery in the national and international market, expanding his customer base beyond South Gujarat.

Amitbhai is one of the many farmer stories at Titodi that showcase the power of the internet and digitization of the agriculture domain. In upcoming blogs, we will cover the success stories of other farmers and producers who were able to reach consumers and achieve unexpected results directly.