The dairy industry is one of Indian agriculture's standout success stories. Until the 1970s, milk shortages were common. The White Revolution, led by Verghese Kurien, not only made India self-sufficient but also the world’s largest milk producer. Now, these achievements are under threat. Milk production growth is slowing, and Indian dairy products struggle to meet global quality standards. The Plate’s TR Vivek speaks with Shashi Kumar, founder and CEO of organic dairy startup Akshayakalpa, about the looming crisis and potential solutions.
Read the full story of Akshayakalpa’s fascinating origins and a brief history of India's remarkable White Revolution.
In this episode, The Plate’s Sanjana James speaks to Anushka Jaiswal, a dynamic young agripreneur from Lucknow. Defying norms in a traditionally male-dominated field, this economics graduate turned her passion for farming into a thriving profession. Anushka’s innovative farming techniques are not just transforming her journey but also setting a new benchmark for modern agriculture. We speak to her about her story, the challenges of being a woman in farming, and the things that could reshape the future of Indian farming.
Given the concerns around climate change and ecological degradation, a shift to natural farming practices that exclude the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, is advocated by many as the only way forward. But, can going back to a simplistic method of using farm waste and manure help feed a country of 1.4 billion? Is natural farming even financially sustainable for farmers and consumers alike? And in any case, there is very little evidence so far about the efficacy of natural farming. A new report by the Bengaluru-based NGO The Nudge, tries to offer some. The Plate's editor TR Vivek speaks to Ankur Sanghai, an associate director at The Nudge and the lead author of the report to understand if the idea of a shift to natural farming is utopian or indeed an urgent need to save the planet.
Small and marginal farmers, or those with less than two acres of land, make up over 86 per cent of Indian farming. A majority of these smallholder farmers are women. Their participation is not just invisible, but they own very little land. In many ways the challenge of reforming agriculture in India, starts with empowering women farmers, especially the landless and poor.
This is what drives the vision of S4S Technologies, a food processing company that works with women farmers and equips them to become entrepreneurs by processing agricultural produce at the village level. Their innovations, which span giving rural women access to technology, finance and market linkage for their products, leads to the doubling of their household incomes. This in turn gives them both an independent income as well as a voice within their families and communities.
The Plate’s Aarthi Ramachandran speaks to Nidhi Pant, a co-founder at S4S Technologies. Nidhi is a chemical engineer by training, a young woman entrepreneur herself who has won multiple awards and a passionate votary for changing the lives of women farmers through entrepreneurship. Nidhi spoke about how she and her co-founders at S4S Technologies came up with the idea of working with rural women; how her company works with the food industry and how food processing as an activity has transformed the lives of the 800 women farmers it works with.
Tomato prices have skyrocketed to Rs 150-200/kilo now. Just a few months ago, farmers were dumping tomatoes on roads in protest against prices falling to as low as Rs 1-2. Why do prices of essential vegetables in India swing as wildly as the dukes ball on a green top in Nottingham? The Plate's TR Vivek speaks to Vilas Shinde, the chairman of Sahyadri Farms, India's largest farmer producer company and of the biggest tomato processors in the country to decode this frequent phenomenon.
India is now the world’s most populous nation of 1.42 billion surpassing China. In November 2022, the world population touched 8 billion. How to feed 10 billion people by 2050 with lesser natural resources, is a subject that has fascinated award-winning US science journalist and writer Charles C Mann. It was the central question of his 2018 book The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World, examined through the life and work of two contemporaneous American scientists with competing visions William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Vogt was the father of modern environmentalism while Borlaug’s role in ushering in the Green Revolution through crops that yielded significantly more may be better known in India. The Plate’s Managing Editor Aarthi Ramachandran spoke to Mann about these two influential figures and what their prescription to feed the world’s most populous nation might be.
Climate change shows up in the form of frequent events of unseasonal rains, heatwaves and even the virtual disappearance of spring time in India. For small farmers, it is now one of the biggest existential threats. BioPrime, one of the few deep-tech startups in Indian agriculture is trying to solve for this problem by developing technologies that rely on rekindling the ability of plants to respond to climate change with nature’s own tools. Started by three plant science PhDs from Pune University, Renuka Diwan, Shekhar Bhosale and Amit Shinde, BioPrime says its agri biologicals are based on time-proven biomolecules, life-friendly chemistry and smart material and energy use. The Plate's Aarthi Ramachandran is in conversation with BioPrime’s CEO and co-founder, Renuka Diwan, who is a rare woman entrepreneur in India’s male-dominated agri and agritech space. Diwan talks about the fascinating science behind BioPrime's products, the challenges of being a woman entrepreneur in the agri sector and the ways to get young girls interested in STEM.
India is the biggest importer and consumer of dates. Given the big demand, India is trying to grow a lot of it and achieve self-sufficiency. The Plate's Anisha Jain spoke to Ajit Singh Batra, Senior Vice President Business Development from Gujarat’s Atul Limited. At Atul, Batra and team run a project called Greening The Desert. It aims to boost indegenuous production of table dates in the desert regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Date farming is quite profitable for farmers in drylands. Can India really become a major date producer and compete with countries in the Middle East? Let's find out
Onion is India’s most politically sensitive crop. Any increase in consumer prices of onions is a nightmare for politicians. But the prices often crash too making farmers angry. Why is that so? What explains the constant supply and demand crisis of Onions in India? And India, an onion surplus nation fails to make money in exports even when there is a global shortage of onions. To find answers to some of these questions, The Plate's TR Vivek spoke to Nanasaheb Patil, who knows more about the Indian onion market than anybody else. He is an onion farmer himself and a member of the agricultural produce marketing committee that runs what is known as Asia’s biggest onion market in Lasalgaon in Maharashtra’s Nashik district.
Some 800 small, grape farmers in Nashik joined hands in 2010 to form a company called Sahyadri Farms. Owned and managed entirely by farmers, it is now a Rs 800 crore company. It is the largest Indian exporter of grapes. Sahyadri makes almost half all the Kissan tomato ketchup sold by the FMCG giant Hindustan Unilever. Today many of the farmers who founded the company are millionaires. We spoke to Vilas Shinde, the founder and chairman of Sahyadri Farms over a couple of days at its impressive 110 acre campus in a village called Mohadi near Nashik. Shinde spoke about his incredible personal journey from being a debt trapped farmer to a successful entrepreneur. And about Sahyadri’s inspiring story that has made small farmers rich, Shinde is clear that India’s farmers must collectivise and think of themselves as entrepreneurs, or quit farming altogether. Listen in!
Read our story on Sahyadri Farms
Any conversation about food and agriculture or even India’s history since Independence would be incomplete without looking at the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution led to a massive jump in food production, making a poor nation self-sufficient in foodgrains. For that reason alone the Green Revolution could be put right at the top of events that shaped modern India.
For a historical perspective, an understanding of India's condition before the Green Revolution, and its gains, The Plate's TR Vivek and Aarthi Ramachandran are in conversation with Harish Damodaran, National Rural Affairs and Agriculture Editor at The Indian Express and Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Harish's recent book Broke To Breakthrough: The Rise of India's Largest Private Dairy Company can be bought here
