Apple View Farmer Producer Company Limited

Up here in Junidhar, life mostly revolves around the apple trees. This company, Apple View Farmer Producer Company Limited, was started by a bunch of us who live around Po Kansakoti in the Rohru area. We use Rajesh Jhamta’s place as our main point of contact since he and his father, Gouri Lal, have been part of this community for ages. Being in a place like Rohru means we spend half the year worrying about the frost and the other half worrying about the hail. We got tired of working on our own and getting bad prices at the mandi, so we figured we should unite. It is better to load one big truck than ten small ones. The roads out of Junidhar can be rough, especially when the monsoon hits, but we manage to get the crates out. We don’t have any fancy talk or big marketing plans. We are just farmers who know our fruit and want to make sure the work we do in the orchards pays off. Some days we are just sitting around Rajesh’s place drinking tea and arguing about the best way to prune the trees or which fertilizer is actually working this year. It is a local thing, run by people who actually have dirt under their fingernails. We just keep at it, year after year, hoping for a clear sky and a good harvest. Every season is a bit of a gamble, but that is farming for you.