Jay Swaminarayan Banana Farmer Producer Company Limited

This place is run out of Uttam Yadav Patil’s spot in Tardi, over in Shirpur. We focus on bananas because that’s what grows well in our soil around here. If you’ve ever been to Shirpur, you know the heat can be something else, but it’s good for the fruit. We spend a lot of time checking the bunches and making sure the water is running right through the rows. It’s a lot of manual labor, honestly. We aren't a big corporation with suit-wearing people; it’s just us in our work clothes trying to get the harvest ready for transport. Some days the trucks are late and we have to sit and wait under the shade of the trees. We try to help the other local growers get a fair shake when it comes to selling. The Jay Swaminarayan Banana Farmer Producer Company started because a few of us realized we could do more if we put our heads together. The office is really just a room where we keep the logs and take calls. You might hear the tractors running in the background if you call us. We deal with the daily stuff like bugs, irrigation, and the price of fertilizer. It’s just the way life is out here in Tardi. We don't have a big marketing team or anything like that. We just focus on the fruit and hope the market stays steady for us this year. The work is hard, but it’s what we know.