Major Ved Prakash Shrama
Gratitude Farms Private Limited
Talking to Major Ved Prakash Sharma opens our senses yet again to the fact that serving the nation can be done is so many ways. Major Ved Prakash is a retired army officer who now help retired soldiers to become organic farming entrepreneurs.
“I served in the Indian Army for 16 years and worked in the corporate world technology sector for another 16 years.
The last 3 years, along with my friends and one other retired officer, we have set up this agri-tech start up by the name Gratitude Farms. Our goal is to help retired soldiers to become organic farming entrepreneurs. We are addressing two problems through our work:
To mitigate the issue of lack of experience in the agricultural sector and to do it right, Major Ved Prakash and his team travelled across the country and learned a lot about organic farming. They now have their own model organic farm.
“We had to convince ourselves about the benefits of our model before we pass it onto other hands.”
How has your initiative been received?
For the small company that we have set up, the response has been very good.
We have set up a model farm outside Pondicherry, where I live and have developed every aspect of what should be sustainably profitable for a small farmer and so we have a 2-acre model.
Every year, about 60,000 soldiers retire from the Indian Army. They retire at an average age of 40-45 years, which is no age to retire. Most of them are from rural background and desire is to settle down back in their villages.
But, owing to a multitude of reasons they are forced to take up menial jobs in cities like security guards etc. That is a travesty at multiple levels not just for the soldier but the fact that if the soldier is in his village, he can actually be a good grass-root leader for rural development.
This was the background with which we had started.
Right now in our farm, we have employed 11 ex-soldiers and we are in the process for setting up a Farmer Producer Company of ex-soldiers in the six districts of North Tamil Nadu. Hopefully, in the next 24 months we will have about 1500 soldiers part of that FPO. The model we have set up will be replicated for each of these.
The Food-Forest Model
Interest levels are also coming in from a lot of organic farming practioners. We are being supported and mentored very well by some seasoned organic farmers. It takes time for us to solve issues.
There is a strong myth among mnay farmers that organic farming cannot be profitable, yields are low, etc. This mostly is a result of ignorance. If you have been practicing non-organic farming, of course there is a period of transition that you will face. But, in the case of land which has not been used and you prepare it for organic farming assuming that water, etc are taken care of, then by very careful design, crop selection and disciplined execution, it can be highly profitable and our farm bears evidence to this. We call it our Food-Forest model.
An element of profitability also is a fact that one of the biggest problems a farmer has is that he doesn't know where to sell. We also faced the same problem. We are primarily focusing on organic vegetables, greens and fruits. There is a huge demand for organic farming but you have to do the marketing well to get the right price.
The model that we have chosen is that of a direct-to-home service. We do not have outlets or shops. For sales, we have our e-commerce platform and WhatsApp.
Being a start up we do not have the budget or money to spend too much on marketing. But, because of our quality, we have a lot of word of mouth advertising and so we have been growing quite rapidly in Pondicherry and Chennai. The end consumers’ level of interest is quite high.
We aim to deliver vegetables to our customers within 8 hours of harvest. In order to shorten the supply chain, we have restricted our farms to be within100 km from Chennai.
Do you only offer services in terms of training or do you help people set up their farm?
Implementing skill development is merely a beginning of the journey. So, we handhold the farmers who take our services. After the training goes well, they will need good seeds, saplings, good-quality nutrients, etc. They will need a lot of guidance on a day-to-day basis. There may be pest attacks and other unforeseen uncertainties. So, we provide a lot of support for all farmers joining hands with us.
Ex-soldiers either come to us as farmers or they come asking if they can work with us before they develop their own farmland. For the latter, we place them as Farm Managers on leased farms where we are working.
How do you differentiate Gratitude Frams from other organic farms?
In the market, you will mostly find two types of approaches:
Eco-system approach: Organic farming practioners who produce, harvest, grade, pack and sell directly to customers.
Aggregator Approach: They only have outlets or online channels and do not have any farms of their own. They collect produce from various farmers and sell it at their outlets.
In our case, we have very consciously chosen the first model where in we produce, grade, sort, pack and sell. So, every step - pre-production, production, processing and sales - is encompassed in our model. It is not easy to operate this. But it works best for farmers to gain the best prices.
Honestly, it is much easier to grow as an aggregator or being just a producer. In our model it takes a lot to perform end-to end activities without any compromise on quality. So, the speed of the growth of our business is not as fast as one would like but that is fine for us.
Hence the fact that we are and end-to-end ecosystem players is what differentiates our farm.
Why the agricultural space after being part of the Indian army and then the corporate world?
During my corporate tenure as well, I wanted to help ex-soldiers. I started inquiring what will fit in well with their experience and aspirations. We focussed on what would be best for the soldiers.
Somewhere along the line, we found organic farming to be quite appealing. When we checked back with ex-soldiers they seemed ready to plunge if we taught them how to go about it. They were ready as long as it improved their livelihood.
So, we started checking out through meetings and got in touch with lot of retired soldiers in Tamil Nadu districts like Thiruvanmalai, Vellore and so on.
It is a thing that has evolved and progressively took shape. We just wanted to do something good for soldiers. Then we got ourselves to start learning about organic farming and developed a full-fledged model farm.
For Training of Ex-soldiers inlarger batches, we are working with SriAurobindo Society to setup a model Training Farm of Food-Foprest model; they have an excellent 60 -person capacity training centre where we will train the ex-soldiers, once the movement across India is restored after the COVI-19 issues are hopefully resolved.
Are there fees attached for this training?
Yes. The syllabus of the training is aligned to National Occupational Standards of the NSDC, so that it becomes applicable for accreditation with reputed institutes as we grow.
The training duration is about 300 hours - 250 hours plus communication skills, entrepreneurship, marketing etc. This we usually cover in about 40 days time. It is 80% practical and 20% theory.
Do you help market the produce of the farmers who have joined hands with you?
Yes, we do. I buy the produce from the farmers who work with me. They have to grow exactly as per our requirements. We pick up their produce from the their farm and we sell it. We give a good price at the farmgate. The benefits here are:
They get their money in time.
The revenue per acre is pretty good.
It takes about 6-9 months for the conversion of land and after that when we start we get a pretty healthy revenue per acre.
In the first full year of prodcution, a farmer can comfortably earn a net amount of 1.5 -2 lakhs and this keeps improving year after year.
Are the training and services extended to ex-servicemen alone?
Anyone is most welcome. The army is our focus and so we try setting up batches of army. But, we are open to conducting sessions for anyone else as well.
Till now, I have conducted 3-4 small batches because these were pilot batches. Once the COVID-19 related movement restrictions are eased, we will offertrainings in batches and will open to anyone interested for it. But the thing is people who want to work with us after the training, because my market is only in Chennai, I will be able to work with them only if they are within 100 - 150 kms from Chennai and Pondicherry. But for training, anyone in India can come and register for the training.
How do you ensure that people who collaborate with you strictly adhere to organic cultivation practices?
Most of the farms I collaborate with are close to our area. So, we have physical supervision as well. Then, there is the element of trust as well. We do plan to have fairly advanced, technology driven, operational monitoring to ensure quality of organic produce. And go for certification as well. But at the end of the day, organic farming in India is a trust-based business.
Working with a ex-soldiers and being an ex-soldier myself, we have high degree of trust. Secondly, we have very close supervision in terms of the nutrients that is being fed to the farm, etc. For most cases, I personally supply the farm inputs. That is another pointer to confirm that all produce is organic in nature. Overall I am very confident.
Also, our farms are open for anyone to come visit. Of course, the biggest proof is always in the pudding. The quality of products in itself gives verdict to the type of farming involved.
In the next few months, we will be implementing traceability technology from the farm to end consumers. That adds to another level of trust with customers.
What are the main challenges you have faced in this venture?
The first issue we faced was the acute problem of pest management. Pest management in organic farming is a perpetual problem. This is something we are still figuring out as to how to best handle. Unlike in chemical farming, where pest is considered an enemy and they spray up the farm with chemicals, organic practices treat them just as unwelcome guests. There are multiple steps and it took us a year to get it right. After the rains,you will see a plethora of pests attacking your farm. So, learning to manage them has been quite a journey.
We have finally found the combination of organic plant based solution which we have sourced from around the country. One of the most effective pest management tecniques uses Dashaparani which has been in existence since ancient times. The effectiveness depends on how well you make it. We source it from a farmer in Maharashtra. Similarly we have sourced a few other things as well.
The second issue was around the yield. People will seldom come to me for the love of organic farming. On the contrary, they will first and foremost come to me for the economic viability of what I am trying to do. It has taken almost over a year to get to the yield that we were hoping for. Our Food-Forest model is all about high yield. We follow Dr Subhash Palekar's ZBNF model. We do not follow it to the last detail, but it has been a source of great guidance and we do pick up a large part of its concept. We do multi cropping, growing up to 15-20 different types of vegetables, greens and fruits in each acre in a highly systematized fashion. To get to that level of design for every acre of farm has been a journey.
Another major hurdle we faced is not alien to any part of our country and that is availability of good working hands. The level of interest in agriculture is going down. We employ rural women to the extent that we can. We do take trainees from agricultural colleges, train them on the job etc. but this is a persistent problem. Even if you have people on the farm, the discipline with which things should be executed is a difficult thing to ensure. That is where working with ex-soldiers as farmers and farm managers can mitigate the problem to quite an extent.
What all crops do you grow on your farm?
We follow a 4 layer model called Food Forest. We have carved out the farm into grids. We have our first layer with trees - papaya, lemon, guava, banana, etc. Then, we have plants like tomatoes, chillies, zuchinia, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, etc. The next layer are all produce that grow below the soil, which is local to our region like yam, turmeric, raddish etc. Then, there after for all the rest of the left over space, every square foot is covered with greens of different varieties. This way each acre contains 15-20 different types of vegetables, fruits and greens which are growing with different cycles of maturity.The sowing calendar is meticulously planned. This way you steadily carve out a harvest every single day.
What is your advice to newcomers to the agricultural field?
I understand that there are lot of people out there who are interested in joining the agricultural sector. Some of them have land. I always advice that this field is an extremely intense affair. One should not enter it unless you are willing to invest 100% of your time and effort into it. It is not a part time job which you can enjoy with people. You have to live the reality every day. It is a way of life and the way you interact with nature.
The second thing is figuring out where the demand is. At the end of the day, when I look at the entire spectrum of activities, at the production side I am wanting to give a dignified livelihood and at the consumption side I aim at providing very high quality produce to the end customer. So, to build a sustainable business around this we have to make sure that we figure out the demand before planning out the production. One of the biggest mistakes that farmers do is producing first and being caught up with where to sell the produce.
For sustainably profitable agriculture by small and marginal famrers, the first thing is to find out where to sell and what to sell .
Gratitude Farms Private Limited
Talking to Major Ved Prakash Sharma opens our senses yet again to the fact that serving the nation can be done is so many ways. Major Ved Prakash is a retired army officer who now help retired soldiers to become organic farming entrepreneurs.
“I served in the Indian Army for 16 years and worked in the corporate world technology sector for another 16 years.
The last 3 years, along with my friends and one other retired officer, we have set up this agri-tech start up by the name Gratitude Farms. Our goal is to help retired soldiers to become organic farming entrepreneurs. We are addressing two problems through our work:
- Dignified livelihood for retired soldiers.
- Profitable organic farming for small and marginal farmers.”
To mitigate the issue of lack of experience in the agricultural sector and to do it right, Major Ved Prakash and his team travelled across the country and learned a lot about organic farming. They now have their own model organic farm.
“We had to convince ourselves about the benefits of our model before we pass it onto other hands.”
How has your initiative been received?
For the small company that we have set up, the response has been very good.
We have set up a model farm outside Pondicherry, where I live and have developed every aspect of what should be sustainably profitable for a small farmer and so we have a 2-acre model.
Every year, about 60,000 soldiers retire from the Indian Army. They retire at an average age of 40-45 years, which is no age to retire. Most of them are from rural background and desire is to settle down back in their villages.
But, owing to a multitude of reasons they are forced to take up menial jobs in cities like security guards etc. That is a travesty at multiple levels not just for the soldier but the fact that if the soldier is in his village, he can actually be a good grass-root leader for rural development.
This was the background with which we had started.
Right now in our farm, we have employed 11 ex-soldiers and we are in the process for setting up a Farmer Producer Company of ex-soldiers in the six districts of North Tamil Nadu. Hopefully, in the next 24 months we will have about 1500 soldiers part of that FPO. The model we have set up will be replicated for each of these.
The Food-Forest Model
Interest levels are also coming in from a lot of organic farming practioners. We are being supported and mentored very well by some seasoned organic farmers. It takes time for us to solve issues.
There is a strong myth among mnay farmers that organic farming cannot be profitable, yields are low, etc. This mostly is a result of ignorance. If you have been practicing non-organic farming, of course there is a period of transition that you will face. But, in the case of land which has not been used and you prepare it for organic farming assuming that water, etc are taken care of, then by very careful design, crop selection and disciplined execution, it can be highly profitable and our farm bears evidence to this. We call it our Food-Forest model.
An element of profitability also is a fact that one of the biggest problems a farmer has is that he doesn't know where to sell. We also faced the same problem. We are primarily focusing on organic vegetables, greens and fruits. There is a huge demand for organic farming but you have to do the marketing well to get the right price.
The model that we have chosen is that of a direct-to-home service. We do not have outlets or shops. For sales, we have our e-commerce platform and WhatsApp.
Being a start up we do not have the budget or money to spend too much on marketing. But, because of our quality, we have a lot of word of mouth advertising and so we have been growing quite rapidly in Pondicherry and Chennai. The end consumers’ level of interest is quite high.
We aim to deliver vegetables to our customers within 8 hours of harvest. In order to shorten the supply chain, we have restricted our farms to be within100 km from Chennai.
Do you only offer services in terms of training or do you help people set up their farm?
Implementing skill development is merely a beginning of the journey. So, we handhold the farmers who take our services. After the training goes well, they will need good seeds, saplings, good-quality nutrients, etc. They will need a lot of guidance on a day-to-day basis. There may be pest attacks and other unforeseen uncertainties. So, we provide a lot of support for all farmers joining hands with us.
Ex-soldiers either come to us as farmers or they come asking if they can work with us before they develop their own farmland. For the latter, we place them as Farm Managers on leased farms where we are working.
How do you differentiate Gratitude Frams from other organic farms?
In the market, you will mostly find two types of approaches:
Eco-system approach: Organic farming practioners who produce, harvest, grade, pack and sell directly to customers.
Aggregator Approach: They only have outlets or online channels and do not have any farms of their own. They collect produce from various farmers and sell it at their outlets.
In our case, we have very consciously chosen the first model where in we produce, grade, sort, pack and sell. So, every step - pre-production, production, processing and sales - is encompassed in our model. It is not easy to operate this. But it works best for farmers to gain the best prices.
Honestly, it is much easier to grow as an aggregator or being just a producer. In our model it takes a lot to perform end-to end activities without any compromise on quality. So, the speed of the growth of our business is not as fast as one would like but that is fine for us.
Hence the fact that we are and end-to-end ecosystem players is what differentiates our farm.
Why the agricultural space after being part of the Indian army and then the corporate world?
During my corporate tenure as well, I wanted to help ex-soldiers. I started inquiring what will fit in well with their experience and aspirations. We focussed on what would be best for the soldiers.
Somewhere along the line, we found organic farming to be quite appealing. When we checked back with ex-soldiers they seemed ready to plunge if we taught them how to go about it. They were ready as long as it improved their livelihood.
So, we started checking out through meetings and got in touch with lot of retired soldiers in Tamil Nadu districts like Thiruvanmalai, Vellore and so on.
It is a thing that has evolved and progressively took shape. We just wanted to do something good for soldiers. Then we got ourselves to start learning about organic farming and developed a full-fledged model farm.
For Training of Ex-soldiers inlarger batches, we are working with SriAurobindo Society to setup a model Training Farm of Food-Foprest model; they have an excellent 60 -person capacity training centre where we will train the ex-soldiers, once the movement across India is restored after the COVI-19 issues are hopefully resolved.
Are there fees attached for this training?
Yes. The syllabus of the training is aligned to National Occupational Standards of the NSDC, so that it becomes applicable for accreditation with reputed institutes as we grow.
The training duration is about 300 hours - 250 hours plus communication skills, entrepreneurship, marketing etc. This we usually cover in about 40 days time. It is 80% practical and 20% theory.
Do you help market the produce of the farmers who have joined hands with you?
Yes, we do. I buy the produce from the farmers who work with me. They have to grow exactly as per our requirements. We pick up their produce from the their farm and we sell it. We give a good price at the farmgate. The benefits here are:
They get their money in time.
The revenue per acre is pretty good.
It takes about 6-9 months for the conversion of land and after that when we start we get a pretty healthy revenue per acre.
In the first full year of prodcution, a farmer can comfortably earn a net amount of 1.5 -2 lakhs and this keeps improving year after year.
Are the training and services extended to ex-servicemen alone?
Anyone is most welcome. The army is our focus and so we try setting up batches of army. But, we are open to conducting sessions for anyone else as well.
Till now, I have conducted 3-4 small batches because these were pilot batches. Once the COVID-19 related movement restrictions are eased, we will offertrainings in batches and will open to anyone interested for it. But the thing is people who want to work with us after the training, because my market is only in Chennai, I will be able to work with them only if they are within 100 - 150 kms from Chennai and Pondicherry. But for training, anyone in India can come and register for the training.
How do you ensure that people who collaborate with you strictly adhere to organic cultivation practices?
Most of the farms I collaborate with are close to our area. So, we have physical supervision as well. Then, there is the element of trust as well. We do plan to have fairly advanced, technology driven, operational monitoring to ensure quality of organic produce. And go for certification as well. But at the end of the day, organic farming in India is a trust-based business.
Working with a ex-soldiers and being an ex-soldier myself, we have high degree of trust. Secondly, we have very close supervision in terms of the nutrients that is being fed to the farm, etc. For most cases, I personally supply the farm inputs. That is another pointer to confirm that all produce is organic in nature. Overall I am very confident.
Also, our farms are open for anyone to come visit. Of course, the biggest proof is always in the pudding. The quality of products in itself gives verdict to the type of farming involved.
In the next few months, we will be implementing traceability technology from the farm to end consumers. That adds to another level of trust with customers.
What are the main challenges you have faced in this venture?
The first issue we faced was the acute problem of pest management. Pest management in organic farming is a perpetual problem. This is something we are still figuring out as to how to best handle. Unlike in chemical farming, where pest is considered an enemy and they spray up the farm with chemicals, organic practices treat them just as unwelcome guests. There are multiple steps and it took us a year to get it right. After the rains,you will see a plethora of pests attacking your farm. So, learning to manage them has been quite a journey.
We have finally found the combination of organic plant based solution which we have sourced from around the country. One of the most effective pest management tecniques uses Dashaparani which has been in existence since ancient times. The effectiveness depends on how well you make it. We source it from a farmer in Maharashtra. Similarly we have sourced a few other things as well.
The second issue was around the yield. People will seldom come to me for the love of organic farming. On the contrary, they will first and foremost come to me for the economic viability of what I am trying to do. It has taken almost over a year to get to the yield that we were hoping for. Our Food-Forest model is all about high yield. We follow Dr Subhash Palekar's ZBNF model. We do not follow it to the last detail, but it has been a source of great guidance and we do pick up a large part of its concept. We do multi cropping, growing up to 15-20 different types of vegetables, greens and fruits in each acre in a highly systematized fashion. To get to that level of design for every acre of farm has been a journey.
Another major hurdle we faced is not alien to any part of our country and that is availability of good working hands. The level of interest in agriculture is going down. We employ rural women to the extent that we can. We do take trainees from agricultural colleges, train them on the job etc. but this is a persistent problem. Even if you have people on the farm, the discipline with which things should be executed is a difficult thing to ensure. That is where working with ex-soldiers as farmers and farm managers can mitigate the problem to quite an extent.
What all crops do you grow on your farm?
We follow a 4 layer model called Food Forest. We have carved out the farm into grids. We have our first layer with trees - papaya, lemon, guava, banana, etc. Then, we have plants like tomatoes, chillies, zuchinia, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, etc. The next layer are all produce that grow below the soil, which is local to our region like yam, turmeric, raddish etc. Then, there after for all the rest of the left over space, every square foot is covered with greens of different varieties. This way each acre contains 15-20 different types of vegetables, fruits and greens which are growing with different cycles of maturity.The sowing calendar is meticulously planned. This way you steadily carve out a harvest every single day.
What is your advice to newcomers to the agricultural field?
I understand that there are lot of people out there who are interested in joining the agricultural sector. Some of them have land. I always advice that this field is an extremely intense affair. One should not enter it unless you are willing to invest 100% of your time and effort into it. It is not a part time job which you can enjoy with people. You have to live the reality every day. It is a way of life and the way you interact with nature.
The second thing is figuring out where the demand is. At the end of the day, when I look at the entire spectrum of activities, at the production side I am wanting to give a dignified livelihood and at the consumption side I aim at providing very high quality produce to the end customer. So, to build a sustainable business around this we have to make sure that we figure out the demand before planning out the production. One of the biggest mistakes that farmers do is producing first and being caught up with where to sell the produce.
For sustainably profitable agriculture by small and marginal famrers, the first thing is to find out where to sell and what to sell .