Farm2Kitchen one of India’s dedicated business connecting organic farmers and producers with consumers has come a long way since its inception 5 years ago. We moved from being an experiment to a sustained effort of keeping this unique platform alive where we connect the minority of small scale organic farmers and organic producer companies with Indian consumers.
Over the years we studied Indian consumers’ behaviour and worked on a strategy that has been a good one so far. Farm2Kitchen is India’s only business which is offering all organic products – be it grocery or lifestyle products like organic clothing or cosmetics – through an omni-channel retailing model. We are online, we are mobile and now we are also having a chain of stores which is hyperlocal and expanding all over India.
We work with small organic farmers and are connecting them with consumers in cities. We launched a few initiatives in our journey as the awareness factor plays an important role in the organic food business. Unless the consumers is connected to ground reality, he/she is not going to consume organic products.
We launched TheFarmersMarket.in – where we are bringing fresh organic produce from local organic farmers to the cities. The mission of The Farmers Market is – to humanize food systems by developing local markets for farmer and artisan products. From the grocery aisles to the industrial farms that fill them, the business of food is on the brink of soullessness—dehumanized by the reduction of our food that erodes the relationship between the consumers and farmers, as well as the farmers and the earth. At the farmers market, you can expect to shop fresh organic vegetables and fruits from certified organic farms around your city. We directly bring the produce from organic farms from surrounding to you. We launched this in Nashik first and now will be having the same in Mumbai, Vadodara and other cities soon.
We also recently launched LifeatFarm.com – India’s 1st portal dedicated to eco-organic tourism. At LifeatFarm, our mission is – to help bridge the gap between urban and rural India and help tourists connect with rural life. Organic farm tourism will help contribute to sustainable rural development and will result in increasing income, employment and economic stability in rural communities in India. Organic tourism is a kind of tourism that brings the visitor in direct contact with agricultural activities at organic farms. The awareness about organic foods and farming can be increased with this kind of activity. This is an extension of Farm2Kitchen which will take the consumers close to ground reality!
To reach out to the Indian consumers, we can never ignore the hyperlocal stores and we realized this over the years while we were doing business online only. So we started developing a model which will help people to go and actually see organic foods rather than just some pictures on internet. After all, the touch and feel factor for foods can never go out of human mind. Farm2Kitchen Organic Food and Lifestyle stores is the outcome of our learning and now we are building a chain of organic retail stores all over India. A lot of hard work has gone off in building this model. We had our share of agonies and happiness while we worked developing this strategy and we are really very proud the way it has turned out to be. Farm2Kitchen Organic Stores will be ‘THE Destination’ for wholesome and authentic organic foods in the coming years.
What are your views on the organic farming/mechanization/ chemical farming debate in India. Where are we and where are we headed?
During the traditional technology period in India, the use of chemical pesticide was limited mainly to the high value crops only. The traditional varieties did not face much problem of insect pest and diseases and if at all they occurred, the traditional method available could control them. However, the introduction of hybrids and adoption of intensive cropping practices, demanded high pesticide use to check the yield losses.
Pesticides are now extensively used to control various pests, which are harmful to crops raised by man for food, feed and fibre production. Though they have played an important role in boosting the agricultural production, however, most of the chlorinated pesticides are non-biodegradable and leave residues, which are detrimental to human beings, animals and the environment. Residue studies in India have also revealed wide spread contamination of the food products and the environment as a whole. The presence of residues of insecticide in food commodities and other components of the environment is a matter of serious concern. Even small quantities of the residues ingested daily along with food can build up to high level in body fat. There is therefore, a constant fear that society is being slowly poisoned by the intake of food contamination with pesticide residue.
In recent years several reports suggests that the agrochemical, especially the chemical fertilizers are resulting in environmental degradation by way of polluting plant and soil environment, water bodies, effecting the ozone layer etc. They also contaminate the ground water and surface water resulting in eutrophication of water bodies.
Organic farming is a holistic production management system, which promotes and enhances agro-ecosystems health including bio-diversity, biological cycles and soil biological activities. As a result, there is widespread organic movement and large demands for organic products.
Awards and Recognition for Farm2Kitchen:
Farm2Kitchen was among the top 3 organizations recognized for outstanding contribution in Digital Innovation for Agricultural Solutions at the Digital India Summit & Awards 2016. We were selected in the top 3 list in “GOOD FOR INDIA” category at the awards by an esteemed jury. It’s a proud moment for all the organic farmers and Farm2Kitchen Team who have been working relentlessly to connect organic farmers with consumers, impart organic farming practices to farmers, experimenting for value addition to fresh organic produce and much more.
We are working on value addition to fresh organic produce – where we can reduce the wastage. In this regard, we are experimenting with solar dried organic vegetables, which have the same nutrient value but a higher shelf life. We are also going to introduce low price organic products to help farmers who are not certified but are doing organic farming ethically. We are launching a separate brand or this category soon.
We are opening Farm2Kitchen stores in all major cities (Mumbai, Vadodara, Chennai, Bangalore, New Delhi, Gurgaon, Surat, Bahadurgarh, mm Ahmedabad etc.) in the next 3-6 months. Work is already underway for our stores in Mumbai, Vadodara and Bahadurgarh and these stores will be open by mid of September 2016. This will take our total number of stores to 5 (we have two stores operational in Nashik) by September 2016. Farm2Kitchen Organic stores will also be connected to local organic farmers for selling their fresh organic produce and will also act as pick up points for online orders in the city/area these stores are operational. We will integrate online/mobile and offline (retail) channels to serve the customers in a convenient& better manner.
As there are various stream of operations at Farm2Kitchen now, we are looking to scale our operations. We are looking for funds for the same as we have a lot of good ideas and initiatives to take organic farming and consumption of organic foods, to the next level in India. We have hired Garg Partners as our investment manager to rope in investors as we seek to raise $1 million in the next two to three months.