Mangat Seeds & Pesticides

Running a shop like Mangat Seeds & Pesticides means your life follows the seasons. We are located at Khanna 25, right where the farmers can find us easily. During planting time, this place is packed. You can smell the earth and the chemicals in the air as soon as you walk through the door. It’s a heavy scent, but after twenty years, I don’t even notice it anymore. We keep all the bags of seeds stacked up high against the back wall. Sometimes a bag rips and we have to sweep up the grain before the rats find it. My hands are usually stained with something or other. Farmers come in and they don't want a sales pitch; they want to know if the crop is going to survive the next rain. We talk about the weather more than anything else. If the monsoon is late, everyone is on edge. If it’s a good year, people are smiling. The floor is just plain concrete and it’s stained from years of work, but that’s how a seed shop should look. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the types of seeds people use, but the way we do business hasn't changed much. It’s just us sitting on wooden stools, looking at catalogs and helping people pick what they need for their land. It’s a bit dusty, but it works for what we do. It is just the way things are in this trade.