Thiruvarankulam Kalasam Farmer Producer Company Limited

If you go to the Saravana Store Complex at the Vanpan 4 Road junction, you’ll find us on the second floor. We are in Alankudi, on Machanviduthi Street. The company is Thiruvarankulam Kalasam Farmer Producer Company Limited. It sounds quite formal, but we are just a bunch of regular farmers from the Thiruvarankulam area. We needed a central spot where we could meet up and organize our harvests, so we took this space above the shops. It’s a bit of a climb up the stairs, but it works for us. Downstairs is always busy with people shopping, which is nice. We spend most of our time out in the fields, but someone is usually in the office to handle the paperwork. Farming in this part of the country takes a lot out of you. You’ve got to deal with the heat and the water issues all the time. By coming together as a producer company, we can buy supplies in bulk and try to get a better price for what we grow. It’s about being practical. We don’t have a lot of big talk about what we’re going to do. We just focus on the next crop and making sure the members get a fair deal. It’s a local effort, run by people who live right here in the village. We know the soil and we know the people. That’s enough for us. We're just trying to keep the farms going for another year. It is not easy, but it is better than trying to do it all by yourself.