Mahasheer Mathsya Farmers Producer

Our group is centered around Menala House in Ajjavaramenala, which is in Suliya Taluk. Somanatha Raj helps keep everything organized for us because there’s a lot of us involved now. We focus on fish farming, which is what the word "Mathsya" is all about in our name. There are a lot of us in this part of the country who have small ponds on our land or work with the local water sources. It’s quite different from farming the land because you’re always worried about the water levels and the health of the fish in the tanks. We decided that if we pooled our resources, we could get better supplies and maybe find better ways to sell what we raise without getting cheated. We’re not a big company with a lot of money or flashy advertisements. Most of our meetings happen right there at the house or out by the water while we’re working. It’s a lot of manual labor, and your hands are always either wet or covered in mud. We like the work, though, because it keeps us outdoors and connected to the natural rhythm of the area. Sometimes things go wrong, like a pump breaking or a bad spell of weather that hurts the stock, but we help each other out. That’s the whole point of being a producer group. We're just local people from Suliya trying to do right by our families.