Chandgadi Shetkari Kaaju Producer Company Limited

If you walk down Madhali Galli in Mangaon, you’ll find us. This is Chandgadi Shetkari Kaaju Producer Company Limited. Chandgad is known for its cashews, and that’s what we mostly focus on. The hills around here are full of cashew trees, and most of us grew up picking them. We decided to put this company together because selling the raw nuts to middlemen wasn't working out well for the local growers. We wanted to see if we could handle more of it ourselves right here in the village. The office is right in the middle of the galli, easy for everyone to drop by after they finish in the orchards. It gets pretty busy during the harvest season when everyone is bringing in their bags. We don’t use any big fancy words or have a shiny building. It’s just a place where we keep our records and talk about the cashew quality. Sometimes the crop is great, and other times the pests get to them, but that's just how it goes with farming. We try to help the smaller farmers in Mangaon get a decent price. It's a lot of manual work, drying the nuts and sorting them out. Everyone in the village knows someone involved with the company. It feels good to have something of our own here in Chandgad instead of relying on people from the big cities to tell us what our work is worth. We aren't experts, we just know our land.