Birsa Adivasi Farmers Producer Company Limited

Down in Bhangwadi, in the Murbad area of Thane, you’ll find us at Hari Dharma Wakh’s house. Birsa Adivasi Farmers Producer Company Limited is basically just a collective of us farmers from the local tribal communities. We’ve always worked the land here, but doing the business side of things was always the tricky part. Murbad is a beautiful place, especially after the rains, but it can be isolated. We decided to register this company so we could have a bit more say in where our produce goes. We aren't business experts from Mumbai, even though we are in Thane district. We are just people who know how to grow things in this specific soil. The office at Hari’s home is where we store our documents and meet to discuss the harvest. It’s not a formal place. You’ll usually see kids playing nearby or someone tending to the cattle while we talk about ledger entries. We don’t have a website or a big advertising budget. Word spreads from mouth to mouth around the village. It’s a slow way of doing things, but it’s how we’ve always lived. We just want to make sure the families in Bhangwadi can keep farming for years to come. It’s a lot of hard work, but we do it together as a group. Sometimes the rain is too much and sometimes too little, but we stay.