Leelawati Krishak Samman Producer Company Limited

Manoj Kumar Gupta is the main person to talk to here in Rithora. We are based in the Mohalla Kurmiyan neighborhood of Bareilly. It is the kind of place where everyone either has a small plot of land or is involved in some kind of local trade. We called the group Leelawati Krishak Samman because we wanted to have some collective pride in the work we do. Manoj’s place is where the main business happens. We have a lot of long discussions about the local market in Bareilly and whether it is worth the cost of taking our produce further out to the bigger cities. The Rithora area has pretty good soil for certain crops, so we try to stick to what works. We aren't a big corporation with fancy branding or a logo. Most of our meetings are just a few of us sitting on old plastic chairs in the shade. We worry about the same things as any other farmer—the cost of water, the latest pests, and the rising price of seeds. We don't have a marketing department or anything like that. We just rely on the quality of the grain and vegetables we grow. It is hard, physical work and the summer sun in Bareilly can be absolutely brutal. We keep all our records in simple handwritten notebooks. It is a bit old-fashioned, but it is how we operate. We are just a group of farmers who decided that standing together was a lot better than trying to survive alone.