Parat Farmers Producer Company Limited

Our group is located in Ward Number 2 in Parat, over in the Poonch area. We work out of Shabir Ahmed’s place. It’s a small community and most of us have been farming these lands for generations. We decided to start this producer company because it’s getting harder to do everything by yourself these days. By coming together, we can share tools or figure out how to get our crops to the bigger markets without losing all our money to middleman fees. It’s not a glamorous job. There’s a lot of dirt under our fingernails and we spend most of the day out in the fields. We grow whatever the season allows, and we spend our evenings at the house talking about seeds or the price of fertilizer. We don't have a lot of fancy equipment or a polished office. It’s just a room with some chairs and a lot of ledgers. We write everything down by hand and try to keep things organized. Life in Poonch can be a bit isolated, so we rely on each other a lot. We’re just a bunch of local guys trying to make the farm work a bit more sustainable. We don't use big words or make grand plans. We just take it one harvest at a time. It’s a slow process, but we’re slowly getting better at the business side of things. We’ve lived in Parat our whole lives and we aren't going anywhere. It’s just who we are.