Gudiyadevi Farmer Producer Company Limited

Down here in Jalhepur, the Gudiyadevi Farmer Producer Company is based at Sushila Devi’s house. It’s House Number 1, so it’s easy enough to spot when you’re coming through this part of Unnao. We started this because we wanted a way for the local farmers here to have a bit more say in how things are done. Most of us have been working these same plots of land for as long as we can remember. It’s not a fancy setup. We use the space we have to organize our supplies and talk about the upcoming seasons. There’s a lot of back and forth about which crops will do better and who has good seeds this year. We try to help each other out when someone’s tractor breaks or when the bugs get into the crops. It's a simple way of doing things, without all the corporate nonsense you see in the cities. Sometimes we sit around for hours just trying to get the books to balance. We’re better at farming than we are at accounting, but we manage to get it done somehow. The air is fresh out here, but the work is definitely heavy. We aren't looking for praise. We just want to make sure the work we do in the fields is worth the effort at the end of the day. It's been a long journey for us but we're still here, doing our thing.