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Journalism of Courage
PUNE, OCTOBER 5: Taking a cue from the milk cooperatives’ success story, farmers from the hinterlands of Pune are preparing to hit the fruit-and-vegetable route and fan out in growing urban centres. They can finally say goodbye to middlemen who denied them a large chunk of profit that came from the markets.
About 40 vegetable and fruit growers from Junnar and Haveli and some heavyweights from Pune’s hospitality industry met at a plush hotel conference room early this week and struck a deal. The farmers will supply farm-fresh products to hotel kitchens directly, throughout the year. The deal is expected to help hoteliers hugely cut down on costs since they will now be dealing directly with the farmers.
At least two farmers’ cooperatives from Haveli and Junnar talukas of Pune are all set to sign memorandums of understanding with Pune hotels for supplying farm fresh products. The Pune Zilla Parishad (ZP) has agreed to work as the nodal agency till the arrangement stabilises.
At a rough estimate, a five-star hotel spends anything between Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh on procuring its daily kitchen stocks. ZP CEO V. Radha’s request was to allot five per cent of their normal demand to the farmers’ cooperatives.
There was unmistakable skepticism when the farmers and hoteliers met for the first time last Monday. But the apprehensions soon melted. The rustic fruit and vegetable growers from Junnar and Haveli not only assured Pune’s hospitality giants about their professional readiness to meet their demands and their flair for information technology, but even discussed the Western tourist’s preference for organic products.
“Frankly speaking, I was personally not aware of many facts,” admitted Pune Hotel Owners Association vice-president Suresh Talera. On his part, Talera announced that farmers would be making vital procurements for his kitchen. So did Association president S.P. Jain.
Radha, who was instrumental in bringing the two sides together, said, “You get fresh farm products directly from the farmers at amazing prices, much lesser than what you usually pay a vendor at your doorstep.”
She also tried to drive home the cost factor through a presentation, pointing out local procurement prices for better varieties of fruits, vegetables, cereals, poultry and fishery products. Radha also suggested that prices could be fixed either on the averages based on agriculture produce market committee prices or actual prices paid by the hoteliers to procurement contractors.
The meeting discussed ways to institutionalise the vegetable route. This would strengthen the fruit-vegetable growers, said Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation managing director Ashish Kumar Singh, who was at the meeting.
There are still some grey areas though. For instance, fixing the prices, supply consistency, last-minute demand variations, transportation and facility of one-window purchases. Yet for J.S. Landge, chairperson of Junnar’s grape exporting Abhinav Grape Growers Cooperative, these factors were not going to be much of a problem.
If there are MoUs for, say, six months or a year with properly quantified demand charts, supply arrangements could not be difficult, Landge told the meeting. His group can provide a similar service even to Lonavla-Khandala hotels, he said. “After all, it’s just half way compared to Mumbai.” Abhinav would soon reintroduce its cut-vegetables-at-your-doorsteps service using refrigerated vans to sell to about a thousand customers in Mumbai, he said.
