Thondainadu Jaggery Farmer Producer Company Limited

Our place is at No.10 on Bajanai Kovil Street in Velam Pudur Village. It’s right near the temple, so you can always hear the bells and the people passing by. We focus on jaggery here, which is something we’ve all been around since we were kids. Thondainadu Jaggery Farmer Producer Company Limited is basically just us farmers trying to handle our own business. Making jaggery is a messy, hot job. You’re around the boiling vats and the smell of sugarcane all day long. It’s sticky work, but it’s what we do. We don't have any polished marketing teams or anything like that. We just produce what we can and hope the market is fair to us. The village life is slow, but the work is fast when the cane is ready. We have a lot of local families helping out. We talk over the fence about the weather or the price of fuel for the crushers. It’s a very local thing. The office on Bajanai Kovil Street is where we keep the bags and wait for the trucks. Sometimes we just sit there and escape the heat for a bit. It’s a community effort, really. We’ve all got skin in the game. We just keep our heads down and try to produce something decent that people in the village can use and maybe sell a bit more for a fair price.