Kalamai Farmers Producer Company Limited

Our place is over in Wadwani, Beed, specifically at Mahesh Rajabhau Munde’s spot. We started Kalamai Farmers because things were getting tough for people around here. It’s a dry area mostly, so we have to be careful with how we use our water and seeds. Most of us know each other from the village or the local market. We aren't doing anything revolutionary, just trying to group our crops together so we have more of a say. Beed is a place where you really have to know the soil to get anything out of it. We meet up and talk about the rains or the price of fertilizer. It’s not a formal meeting with a big table. Usually, we're just sitting around and talking shop. Sometimes the younger guys have new ideas and the older ones tell them why it won’t work. We eventually find a middle ground. Our address is 1912/14, and it’s basically just a home base for us. We don't spend money on advertising or anything like that. People just know who we are by word of mouth. It gets dusty in the summer and muddy when it rains. That’s just part of the deal. We keep our records in a few old books and try to stay on top of the paperwork. It’s a lot of work outside of the actual farming, but it feels right to do it ourselves.