Srinagar: In 2013, when Sana Masood, a young girl from Srinagar returned to her homeland, she brought along insightful experience from her career as consultant with multinational companies like FabIndia and Organic India, outside Jammu and Kashmir. Back home, the young girl proceeded with her agricultural startup –Sustainable Eco enterprise Development Solutions or SEED.
Nine years on SEEDS, a group of social entrepreneurs works with hundreds of beneficiaries to literally give wings to aspiring women engaged in small scale agricultural activities in rural Kashmir.
Having established three centres each in South Kashmir’s Bandzoo Pulwama, Central Kashmir’s Dara Srinagar and Uri area in North Kashmir, Masood’s organization is multidimensional in helping the small scale women farmers in these areas to earn for their primary activities in the fields.
From imparting training to women farmers for various agricultural activities, providing quality seeds, professing organic farming, conducting exposure tours of these farmers to buying back the produce on market rates from these women, the organization is “at the forefront to help the small time or backend farming community.”
“Initially we used to impart training to few women only, but within few years, the centre has added more than 115 beneficiaries from nearby villages of Bandzoo, Khanbasti, Lassipora, Zasoo to name a few,” says Sana while referring to common facilitation and demonstration centre established by her organization at Tumlihal, Pulwama.
Experts frequently visit the centre to train the beneficiaries.
A women beneficiary Shaheena(name changed) from Tumlihal says “that last time Dr Nayeema Jabeen had visited the facilitation centre and I learnt a lot of things about the cultivation and processing of red chilies.” She says after getting affiliated to the centre, she has been able to earn handsome money from her backyard vegetable farming.
Seconding Shaheena, a number of beneficiaries from the surrounding villages say that they are benefitting in many ways from the centre.
Laced with an ideology of sustainable agriculture, the primary sector organization strongly advocates organic farming.
“Apart from training the women in various agricultural techniques, our stress is on sustainable agriculture. And that is possible through organic farming. So our main focus is to train these farmers in producing manure and growing the food without using any chemicals or fertilizers,” adds Sana.
At Uri centre, there are more than 75 beneficiaries and at Dara in Srinagar, a state-of-the-art centre equipped with multiple facilities is being built, she says.
Having leased some area of land, SEED has a specialization in growing ethnic and heritage lot. Fresh vegetables to pulses and medicinal plants to herbs, the organization has successfully tried hands at a variety.
Sana says they are able to grow a large number of ethnic varieties of vegetables and herbs in collaboration with local farmers in different parts of the valley.
“We prefer to own the cultivation of local popular crops as per the area. That does not only promote the local produce but also helps in cooping to the demand for various local agricultural products,” she further adds.
Buoyed with the response of local women farmers, SEED has recently launched Vestaun, a brand name for their products. Vestaun in local parlance means feminine friendship. “Picked, processed and packaged carefully, these products showcase Kashmir heritage.”
“Be it a Taraxacum Officinales popularly called as Haend, dried vegetables ,rare mushrooms like guchi, ethnic pulses, red chillies, garlic or mint,” Vestaun packs them all.
Providing an opportunity to small scale women farmers, Vestaun offers ample platform to process and market their produce.
“Lot of our produce particularly in far-flung areas does not reach the market in time. So we need to increase the shelf life of these products. And, it can be effectively done through proper processing and packaging.”
It is not only the vegetables, Vestaun, which eyes national and international markets, has brought a number of dry fruits, pickles and jams to the market. Lavender oil, walnut kernel, rose oil are the latest additions.
As the organization gradually expands, more and more people are willing to work with the SEED to reap the actual benefits from farming. And the women among them are at the forefront.
Sana says her organization is more focused on women because being women herself, she wants to “inculcate the feeling of dignity in women.” “Since a number of women are directly or indirectly engaged in agricultural activities, but their contribution seldom counts. It’s our mission that every valuable contribution of women folk particularly in the field of agriculture counts and they get their due profit share for their efforts,” says Sana explaining to flock of rural woman, the essence of her latest brand Vestaun.
