Ashtabosu Agro Farmers Producer Company Limited

Over in Dhamla village, which is part of Khanakul-1B in Hooghly, Sagar Ghosh’s place is the home for Ashtabosu Agro Farmers Producer Company. Hooghly is famous for its agriculture, and we are right in the middle of it. The name Ashtabosu refers to a group of eight, which is how we started out—just a few of us coming together to manage our crops better. Sagar’s house is where we keep our tools and the records for the company. It’s a very local affair. You’ll often find a few of us sitting on the porch talking about the potato crop or the latest prices at the mandi. Khanakul can be a difficult area when the rivers rise, so we have to plan around the seasons very carefully. We aren't a big corporation with polished brochures. We’re just guys from Dhamla who know how to work the land. The office is basically a room with a wooden table and a few chairs where we drink tea and figure out our schedules. There’s a lot of manual work involved, and we don’t mind getting our hands dirty. We’ve been here in this part of West Bengal for a long time, and we just want to keep things going for our families and the other farmers in the village. It’s a quiet life, focused on the soil and the weather, just like it’s always been. We just try to help each other out when things get difficult.