3) Description of your products or services: : We mainly deal in mushrooms with a definite focus in the following: 1. Make mass awareness of it being cheapest means of protein (grade A) and an income generating activity which can be grown very easily with little paddy straw, Spawn (Seed), and know-how. 2. Our work focuses mushroom cultivation to help in building up a federation among the farmers for optimum benefit. 3. Provide easy availability of planting materials, technical guidance at minimum of cost and optimum marketing support through Collection and Distribution centers. 4. For sustenance and support of our operation including social security to the farmers introduction of micro-credit program “Mushroom Bank” where the farmers will be supported by planting materials etc on credit and will payback in terms of produced mushrooms. 5. Our all out effort in popularizing mushroom with our lab to land strategies include involvement of all section of people including media, government agencies, corporate bodies, various citizen base organizations, professionals etc in helping us popularizing its uses and cultivation practices at all levels since 1994.

We started making awareness and are conducting regular training at our own unit and in different parts of the northeast India since 1994. So far we have trained and sensitized more than 1, 00,000 people over this years. We had developed required facility to make good quality planting materials readily available to the interested growers at the same time provided with marketing linkage. Market linkage we have not only provided to the farmers of North east but also mushroom farmers from Ithawa MP (Pradhan), Bihar, West Bengal and Maharastra. The farmers are giving the produced mushrooms to us as because we provide them with the best price. We could provide the farmers with the best price as because there are no middlemen. We have linked directly with the competent marketing organization in developing a very strong brand image of mushroom in the market and have earned a substantial goodwill in the local markets since 1995 onwards. This transparent holistic approach has made us sustain mushroom cultivation as an additional source of income for so many people and many have started taking it up as a regular income activity.

When a farmer grows mushrooms apart from all other activities what he is doing, he is introduced to a new low cost nutritious food as well as an additional source of income. The educated unemployed youths has an easy farming activity to start as their income generating activity. Unlike other cultivation process it’s much easier and can be termed as a “white collar farming activity” as one does not have to go down into the mud with the bullocks to do this cultivation. More over the cost of one spawn packet and 3 HMPE bags is Rs 15/- and it can produce a minimum of 2 Kg of fresh oyster or Milky mushroom fetching them Rs 30/- to Rs 60/- per Kg fresh. The farmers no matter how poor they are they are in a position to collect paddy straw for free and at Rs 15/- they can at least eat 2 Kg of a very nutrition food. Further it can be grown by the poorest of the poor to be able to produce as land requirement is negligible. He can produce the mushrooms inside his own living room. The quality of life gets better as new income source starts using some spare time and a cheap nutritious food becomes available.

Our primary clients are from the rural areas mainly from the farming community and most interested groups are the women and the youths. But once our Mushroom Bank project will be needed to be implemented in the field our primary focus will be the poorest of the poor land less agricultural labours. The ultimate Goal of the Mushroom Bank is to provide alternative employment avenues by Commercially Sustainable Mushroom Growing Units supported by a federation. The tool used is Mushroom Bank (Micro- Credit) to the under privileged group/ mushroom farmers on credit and recovered the same by payment of mushroom harvested instead of money. After recovery, the recovery amount will be utilized in the same individual till he or she is sustainable then the amount will be provided to another under privilege people who are in queue. At the end of the first two year one new cluster of 10 individual participant will be provided Mushroom Banks Support along with credit linkage to the earlier two cluster i.e. 2 cluster supported by the initial fund will support in total one new and two old units. This project is focused to build up the capacity of small and marginal farmers including people living below the poverty level to be able to participate in the market economy.

So far the entire system has been developed as need arises and a system evolves out of continuous all round effort. Although our so far developments are yet in a disorganized state and as such there are many things needed to be streamlined and developed till we reach a safe level of sustenance and growth. The problems we face are like: The farmers have to travel long distances to collect the planting materials or at times are charged exorbitant price for the planting materials by some middlemen. To tackle this we have made extensive study in various socio-cultural and socio- economic patterns of people we are working with as our area of operation is huge in this initial stage itself. Our area of intervention directly and collaborating with other organizations are mainly in Assam, Meghalaya and some parts of Nagaland with recent penetration into North Bengal, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh. As such now we have started our “Kathfulla Haat” project where we go to the major weekly rural market in one Development Block area. Every week on Saturday at Sonapur a big rural weekly market we go with our mobile shop where we make all planting materials and technical services available and buy the produced mushrooms at a predetermined price. Which helps the poorest person to be able to buy just one packet/ Unit at Rs 15/- and start up the activity as earlier even if he was trained to cultivate mushroom it was not possible for him to waste one day to come to the Guwahati City to collect some packets of Spawn at the same time it was economically not viable. But now as in the market day he is bound to come for his weekly marketing or to sell some of his products he can very easily buy the spawn and also bring the mushrooms once it’s produced with our fear of where to sell. At the same time he gets to know at what price the mushroom are then being sold and the cost involved in it he could understand that he is a very important part of the entire business. Further for a new person he gets his tips on all technicalities for growing every week. As this direct service has come to the easy reach to the people only in the Sonapur areas its need to be made available to the entire region. As such we have gone into three villages in Sonapur areas to make it Mushroom model villages. The total house holds in all three will be approx 560 houses. We are working in a participatory manner from the villagers and target to make each and every house hold do the activity under our direct technical guidance free. Once the villagers get accustomed with growing mushrooms and come to know every aspect closely they can easily teach the other villagers in their areas. This will then make our collection and distribution center run sustainable and then we will open one permanent Collection and Distribution center and hand it over to a facilitator under the supervision of the farmers committee. Further the Mushroom Bank project can ten start in this center.

The need for the mushroom apart from a nutritious food and income generation activity are yet another tool for our organization to develop a network among the farmers of this region. As there is no such federation of farmers they are venerable in front of the Middlemen and Government officials corrupt practices even the bank officials does not spare the farmers from the clutches of exploitation. This network will be formed in a three tire federation supported by the Mushroom Bank.

As regarding innovation the mushroom cultivation is new in our area at the same time very few efforts are seen in the Agro-economic front in the real sense as most of the NGO’s does mostly Government sponsored projects. Our efforts in my knowledge are innovative as we don’t have any examples to follow we try lot of methods together or simultaneously and one or some of it helps in the sustenance of our efforts so far.

4) Description of the operational model: As far as production is concern we produce in terms of materials through various links and teaming up. We get the best spawn at reasonable price from Protein Food the main promoter of our organization Mushroom Development Foundation (MDF). This is a win-win situation between Protein Food + MDF + Mushroom Farmers + Mushroom Consumers/ Lovers.

Protein Food produces the Spawn it has its own infrastructure we are operating from Protein Foods office itself. Protein Food from its spawn and mushroom sales have promoted us to make its business sustain and grow and as our objectives are similar we are working together. Mushroom Development Foundation is the bridge from Protein Food to the doorstep of the farmers and for all other socio-economic needs. The backward linkages are taken care by MDF. MDF mainly produce products like training modules, federation building process and the Micro-Credit “Mushroom Bank”. Apart from it in our social security schemes we are to provide with Life and general Insurance cover to the farmers including exposure to information technology and updated information on the market economy. The mushroom will be then produced by the mushroom farmers and we will develop a proper effective linkage to send it to various markets effectively.

After the mushroom is produced and is marketed by the Committees the surplus will be sold to Protein Food as they have their expertise in handling bulk quantities both in processing and marketing.

The system in which we are now planning to implement our idea of the Collection and Distribution centers has been discussed earlier. Below once again we are discussing on the project we have named locally as “Kathfulla Haat” it means Mushroom Market.

The Plan:

1. Make the pickup van given to us as award by The Clarance Foundation into a mobile shop (C & D Center). 2. Visit local weekly rural market regularly each week make awareness and demonstrations on the activity and make planting materials available at the same price as its available in Guwahati. 3. What ever spawn will be sold, mushroom production will start coming after 30 days as such we are expecting to buy mushrooms from the 4th or the 5th Weekly market day. 4. Once this spreads among the people that Planting materials, technical know-how and Market with predetermined price is available we expect that it will be sustainable to start the permanent Collection and Distribution Center which will be economically viable for a person to live his bread by running the center. 5. So first we start with one such unit and gradually go up to six such units at a time. Considering 6 days weekly Markets in the beginning. I mean in 7days of the week at a time we will take our Mushroom Mobile unit to 6 rural markets. 6. Once we establish the permanent (C & D) center in the 1st place we will move with the mobile van to the seventh destination. 7. Then gradually we will make the farmers our members and start Micro-Credit Linkages. And this will be the beginning of the real federation and the idea of Mushroom Bank as micro-Credit linkage for optimum production by the farmers will be achieved.

The Road map for starting up with the first C & D Center at Sonapur some 35 Km from our head office and 18 Km from our Lab are as follows:

a) We have done extensive touring and reacting with the local people and our existing mushroom farmers. Collected maps and other relevant Data of the area. b) Meeting with the Local Circle Officer, Sr Block Development Office, 3 NGO’s and Sonapur College has been completed. Printed of a leaflet in Assamese language and started its distribution along with banner and posters. c) Meeting with the President, Secretary of the Goan Panchayt (Village elected development authority) , about 30 no’s of Goan Bura (Village Head Man), NGO field Workers from different villages depending on SONAPUR Weekly market along with training on mushroom production to several Self Help Groups and Clubs leaders, putting up banners, posters etc will start from 16th onwards to 26 th of August and on 27th we will start the first day at the Rural market with our Mobile Shop where we will have one TV with VCD to show a mushroom related Training Film, Practical demonstration on mushroom growing and Cook mushroom pokara and sell. Here the Spawn will be made available with the other required materials at the same Guwahati price. d) Further in this process once we start the weekly market from 27-08-05 (Haat) from Sonapur we will take up three village at three strategic mid corners almost equal distance from the market place and make it into Mushroom Model Village where every house hold will start up the activity at home scale initially directly under our direct technical supervision. The other villages will be able to follow these model villages. Some of the villagers have shown interest to take it up as commercial activity in our intervened village which again is a very positive sign in each village we are expecting 1-3 Groups commercially cultivating mushrooms as such we will require just 20 such clusters to produce mushroom in maximum to make the Collection and distribution center to sustain.

We have started this from 27-08-05 and so far have selected the three villages three rounds of meeting with all section of people and training at two village has been over out of 500+ house holds almost 150 of them has already started few bags of mushroom cultivation the production will be coming out very soon and we have intensify our effort in this villages. The level of participation among the villagers in each and every section is so far very encouraging. This is an entire new thing for them as told to us absolutely frees training, technical follow up and assured doorstep market.

When we talk of innovation we have the following points: 1. Mushroom cultivation has come to their village as one of the youth in each village has taken training in our regular training at our Khanapara Office at various times. One at a village at Morangabari had taken training in 2001 he was erratically cultivating mushrooms and that’s how the villagers knew of mushroom. 2. We had selected these villages as in our data base we have found the three names from the training register once we have selected the villages. We have worked so intensively in conducting our training over the years that we are confident that in every 5 village in Assam we will find one trained mushroom farmer. Our training started from 1995 onwards and it was vigorous during 1998 to 2002 with training and massive sensitization distribution of planting materials. In certain sensitization programs there were more that 400 people together in a big theater. 3. In our awareness/ training we start with an audio video short film of 20 minutes on mushroom cultivation, spawn production, farm management, cooking and nutritional and cosmetic facts with a back ground story in local language and very good ethnic fusion music. Then we show them practically how to make the mushroom bags. We carry a small model shelter where 30 bags can be hanged for production of at least 20 Kg fresh mushrooms in 70 days as such in a year up to 80 kg. the cost of the house is only Rs 50/- investment, as rest of the materials are available in every house hold. The sale realization is Rs 30 X 80 Kg = Rs 2400/- net profit is planting materials 40 units of planting units @ Rs 15/- each 600/- So Rs 2400 – Rs 650 = Rs 1750/- using paddy straw available at every house hold. This focuses the lower income groups to take up the activity. Once they are being able to understand it and gets used to the cultivation practice it will be much more practical in providing credit linkages. 4. In case a network of farmers are to be focused in real sense in identity base agricultural crop to be formed and a federated strong structure given. It will be very hard to be build it now and there will be resistance by various vest interest for it to happen. As such as for mushroom we have the strong database and a hand full of people scattered all over the state it’s easier to network and build up a strong federation system and support it by social security and credit linkages. This can then be easily copied by other activity farmers as mushroom farmers are from the farming community.

5) Description of the financial model: Yes they buy the Spawn and planting materials from us and have to pay a nominal fee in our campus training. But in the field at Sonapur areas all training are free.

For low income groups we approach local organizations and government organizations to provide us with logistics and other required assistance in organizing such programs. We bring in the required information and motivate the organization to take up mushroom as an alternative income source to their areas of operation. They accordingly arrange the required funds for conducting the programs, in certain occasions we prepare the required proposal for them to approach for fund allotments. Other mechanism we work out with the fellow mushroom entrepreneur once the person gets trained by us in our campus he goes back and starts his small unite for mushroom production. And he needs publicity as such he ties up with local development agency, or firm and jointly advertise with the help of a club or women organization and fixes a training date where turn out is about 40-50 no’s and provides us with the bare minimum to cover our expenses to travel and arrange for our accommodation and food. They raise the funds as very nominal Rs 10/- to Rs 20/- per person and raise the other amount in joint exercise with some other organization. This helps the person in that locality to get a free extensive publicity of his mushroom products and as the requirement for the quantity of planting materials increases making his cost for procurement of the planting materials go down.

In our lab to land strategies we have for almost four years have executed an ARIASP society project of the World Bank through the govt. of Assam to distribute planting materials and train people in 21 districts in the state. There are many instances where in Garo Hill areas in Meghalaya and Hamren areas in Karbi Along which are hilly and very backward region with food scarcity and malnutrition so high that 2 out of every 10 child born has certain type of deformity specially in Baghmara areas. We have motivated the Govt. agencies and have gone there several times in different areas and are still working to bring a major sustainable project through the IFAD project & Meghalaya Govt. at Garo Hills. As mushroom cultivation can be very easily done in these areas and the low cost high value mushroom crop will help intensively to fight malnutrition and increase there income; incase our project proposal are considered by the authorities we could provide them with the necessary linkages. For Hamren and some Garo Hills areas the IFAD project is helping us to outreach the poor people of their project areas with linkages.

As far as direct funding are concern we have not received any funding from any organization in our work so far. Except for an award from the Clarence Foundation and the fellowship amount given to us by Ashoka Innovators for the public. We are still working with the limited funds made available by the remunerations amounts by various organizations given to us as honorarium for resource person. We are trying for some training and awareness funds which could intensify our awareness efforts. The initiatives are mostly supported by the sales of Spawn and Mushrooms from Protein Food. But due to the heavy floods in 2004 our efforts have been slowed down drastically as support from Protein Food has suffered due to heavy loss in the floods. Only the vehicle from the Clarence Foundation and some funds for publicity and some awareness remunerations and very small amount of training fees has kept us going as of now.

Apart from funds coming from Protein Food we have sold some forms @ Rs 2/- and this year for holding the Federation Meet on 5th February 04 we got a sponsorship of Rs 17,000/- from SFAC a Govt. of India organization. “Registration fee” and “annual membership fee” from the Mushroom Development Foundation is sources of income for MDF. Some contribution from individuals such as friends and family as donation at extreme times saves.

We are nearing to be economically free and could work out independently if we could start up with our Micro- Credit project The Mushroom Bank. We need a support system as regarding funds to be able to develop the sustenance of the collection and distribution Centers along with starting up of the Mushroom Bank.

We have a very strong strategy in hand to make the project totally self sustainable. We are working in the legalities of our Organization MDF to register as a Non Profit Organization with the Society registration and Income Tax department but due to various reasons our 80G registration are yet to be given to us; our organization profile is enclosed for our current status. We are preparing a project to be applied to the Income Tax rule 35AC which will enable us with 100% tax benefit to the contributors of the project.

# The resource for setting the MUSHROOM Bank will come from the Corporate Houses and from Individual Tax Payer.

# Corporate Houses will pay their tax to get Advertisement.

# The Individual Tax Payer will give the Donation from their Payable Income Tax head. The individual will be provided with full information on the poor farmer progress he adopts every half yearly.

The funds will be used for Production Support (Backward linkages)

1. Federation building process with Collection and Distribution Centers. 2. Mass sensitization, awareness and development on mushroom cultivation and the services and utility of the federation system. 3. Developing Monitoring and Information system. 4. Generation of micro-credit system (Mushroom Bank). 5. Introducing Insurance’s, legal and social security schemes. 6. Creating Revolving fund for the collection and distribution centers. 7. Developing Effective R&D in production management and self life enhancement cost cutting etc.

Like as we have started with our first phase of the process to sustenance with our “Kathfulla Haatt” Mushroom market concept. Here we are focusing in setting up the Collection and Distributions Centers (C&D.C) and make it sustainable. For this we are organizing massive awareness by posturing, banners, leaflet distribution, loud speaker announcements, and Vehicle decoration for campaigning in the areas around the weekly rural market we have targeted to visit regularly every week. Further we are organized lot of awareness/ training/ sensitization meets in the areas and still have planed out several such meets. Further we have made an audio cassettes along with popular local music which we play while campaigning further in every awareness meet we show the people an audio video short film on mushroom cultivation and practically show on spot how to make bags, also we carry with us a model for hanging 30 bags at just Rs 50/- and we carry the materials along with us. This we started working from July 2005. and started going to the Sonapur Market regularly from the 27th of August 2005. To strengthen the activity further we have adopted three villages. Where we focus to make each house hold take up the activity in whole of the village and we have started providing door to door technical support service. We have targeted in such a way that every house hold has a kitchen garden or keeps some chicken this are not totally commercial activity but at times when they have more than needed or they are in distress they sell it. As such just like their kitchen gardens we are trying to make the mushroom cultivation to get accustomed by the villagers. If we succeed for the whole village to produce the mushrooms year round and get a habit of it and comes to know about the cultivations thoroughly they will continue with it at micro-scale and we hope this will be and example to all the other villages to follow. Further some of the youths or women groups will then take it up commercially and our collection and distribution centers will become sustainable as the requirement of planting materials will become high and quantity of mushroom increase. Once it gets sustainable we form the committee of the local member farmer’s and work out all the operational modalities and hand over the Center to a facilitator jointly appointed by the farmers and MDF mutually. This membership etc will be the federation formation stage.

Moment the center becomes sustainable on its own we start working for the Mushroom Bank project. First we identify the poorest of the poor and according to availability of funds start the operation of The Mushroom Bank.

The sustainability of the center and our organization depends totally on the production of mushrooms. As the farmers will deposit the produced mushrooms at the center they will be given a pre determined price as agreed mutually so far its fixed at Rs 30 /- per Kg. Suppose the mushroom are then sold at Rs 40/- from the difference of Rs 10/- the facilitator will be remunerated, expenses of running the center will be paid along with the collection and distribution of the center, an amount for technology marketing concept and branding will be charged, another part will go to the MDF corpus for the initial support of the Mushroom Bank and the rest will be invested to Social security schemes for the member farmers all this will be mutually decided by the Farmers committee & MDF jointly. Once we develop one such center (C&D.C) and bring it to sustenance, we move to another area. Leaving the Mushroom Bank Project to start in the first place(C&D.C). And once the Mushroom Bank project starts then the project becomes totally sustainable. As against credit they will pay back with produced mushrooms with interest in form of mushroom produced.

Our target for setting up of the first (C&D.C) sustainable will take us almost one year. And the Mushroom bank to start operating by the next year and get sustainable with in next five years.

      Client fees represent this approximate percentage of operational budget: 10%

6) Key operational partnership: The partnership is in various stages and the partnerships are focused in a win- win situation at all levels. 1. For supply of planting materials we have tied up with Protein Food which has a full scale lab facility with experience in producing Spawn from 1995. As they need the sale of spawn increase and we need good quality spawn to be bridged to the farmers’ doorstep Protein Food is ready to provide us with spawn at the minimum cost. 2. We have tied up and have submitted with different project proposal to various organizations based at different areas i.e. with IFAD projects, North East Dioceses and Social Forum, Bosco Reach Out, Assam Mahila Samata Society, Border Area projects, several other NGO’s and with certain Govt. programs and projects. Further over the years we had been doing our promotional activities mostly collaborating with such partnerships. The objective of most of the organization is to develop the socio- economic conditions of the people in their areas and every one can fit into our line of activity to produce mushroom specially in the rural areas as production of mushroom is very simple and requires very little cost as discussed earlier. At the same time the climate supports the growth and raw materials are abundantly available. Our biggest advantage in propagating the mushroom growing concept has gained much ground with out any funding coming to us directly due to these reasons. 3. For policy matters we have to keep on persuading the Government for various matters. As we fought for exemption of Sales Tax under schedule I now we are perusing for exemption from Value Added Tax imposed again. 4. For our Mushroom Bank project we will need to extend our partnership with the corporate as explained earlier. They will pay to get advertisement and will earn good will for product targeted at the rural market. Our collection and Distribution centers could become out lets for various farmers friendly products at a factory price, are in our process of planning.

The major challenge we face today is that we don’t have funds to carry on our activity for long. But we are trying all means and are determined to carry on at all cost and make these three villages succeed in caring on with mushroom cultivation in each house hold. For this we have the vehicle we have purchased from the Clarence award and little money for the infrastructure to be developed for each collection and distribution centers and a small amount for its awareness at the same time some fund as to subsidies the cost for the transportation of the planting materials at the initial stage.

We have a strong team of volunteers in the field as facilitating our work and the spirit of participation by the villagers are very high. But at MDF we have very limited team to work looking in all the expansion matters together as the activity has been dampen during the previous year’s floods. To scale up the activity we need to arrange funding of the project we are working in. as such our team building process is also going on and three peoples have joined us with our working strength at all fields going up to just 10 no’s and are trying to get some funds for the work they are suppose to be looking after. Until the funds starts coming we are bound to go slow and each of us have much more work then our capacity and as such are going slow. But we need to revive very fast as the harvest time is during November immediately after it the people will be in a position to start up the mushroom cultivation seriously by then we need to be ready in all aspect. If we could penetrate aggressively during that time from all fronts we will gain success immediately.

If we compare opportunities with challenges our opportunities out numbers the challenges in big numbers. Only little bit of funds to continue our work for another year in the field and some R&D in the lab will result in sustainable (C&D.C). Further the process of team building is gaining and within a very short time we will be able to overcome our manpower problem and by that time we will need only the legal requirements to be fulfilled. At the same time if we get this award it will solve large extent of our problems. We will be ready to meet the corporate. As Ashoka Innovators have done a FEC exercise in case this works out our capacity building to face the corporate will be even more skilled and funds for the Mushroom Bank will be easier.

Opportunities of Mushroom and our efforts:

• Good Agro-climatic condition. • Abundance availability of raw material. • Available man power. • Easy processing and 12 months production. • High value crop and long self-life for dry mushroom. • Our 11 years of experience in propagation, processing, marketing and concept building. • High food value and medicinal values compared to its low cost makes it the most important future food. • Market competition is negligible compared to any other product. • Very low investment in mass production. • Big scope in product diversification. • To make a strong network among the farming communities and provide social security. • Expose the small farmers to the market economy and stop exploitation by the middlemen and other corrupt forces. • Development of “Mushroom Points” direct selling out lets for urban areas selling ready to eat fast food dishes with various value added mushroom products.

There is a lot of advantage in producing mushroom the most important being it grows excellently well in high humidity and can be easily processed or dried and stored for a long time. Further it could be used as a tool to change the existing system of agro-economy in the third world countries.

NEED ASSESMENT:

The agro-climatic condition as discussed earlier is its major plus point, apart from it the following points explains it needs.

1. Since land holding is less in North Eastern region its one of the most suitable Cultivation practice as requirement of land is very little to any other agricultural activity. 2. Can be an alternative income generation activity for Jum Cultivation and flood prone areas, dry and arid lands. 3. Each day production planning can be achieved with a 365 days production cycle. 4. Investment is very little in every sphere compared to any other agricultural activity. 5. Very high value crop compared to any horticultural activity. 6. Existing market system is not disturbed by its change and will not be noticed by the jargons of today’s agro-economy until the good giant is born. 7. This is the strongest system for the small farmers as optimum benefit is bound to come to them. As this is an identified product base system and chain reaction is a must for its sustenance.

The idea is new and to make the people take it up is taking time in its development at the same time funding agencies are reluctant to fund an economic development project with mushrooms to network farmers, specially in the way we need the funds for doing our work. Our capacity for such issues needs to be developed further to be able to get the fund problem over so that we could scale up the work faster.

7) Current outreach:

What is the order of magnitude of the potential demand for your products or services? Which
    other low-income groups, countries or regions could benefit from it? Try to quantify (number
    of clients, market size in currency):
When we talk of the magnitude I would like to explain why we are trying to develop a strong system to link the smallest of the farmers/producer to the market economy to end poverty.

The middle man in the agriculture sector is much powerful as they have much better approach to all kind of resources compared to the farmers specially they control the market. In my experience for last few years I could realize some of it in the following manner:

The middle man today in the mushroom sector is no other than some govt. and non-govt organization trying to siphon the development project with out any real commitment to mushroom. The farmer in Assam my home state and in the North East part of India is specially exploited to the highest extent. Although in other parts of India and the third world, also middleman influence is strong.

Few years back a company manufacturing ayur-vedic products contacted some farmers to produce Nodia variety Ginger and at a good price, but when the ginger were harvested the company did not turned up to buy. The farmers were at a distress and had to sell the ginger at a through away price to the middle man as such the company got the quantity of the ginger at a much less price than what was promised to the farmers. The farmers are not organized and are ignorant and powerless, as land holding and financial conditions are very poor. This kind of incident are not new and not one time, it is a regular happening every day. The social commitment of most of this middle man is insignificant as they come from different parts of the country and with the sole intention of earning some fast money with optimum level of exploitation the Government sector gets very easily trapped as level of corruption goes up as there is no one from the poor farmers sector to ask any questions. The dumb farmers are being exploited even with out properly understanding what is happening, as the majority of the farmers are uneducated.

Another factor responsible for this drastic condition is a major policy of the Government during 1970’s a land ceiling act was enacted where most of the local farmers above 50 bighas of land had to surrender the rest of their land to the Government. These surrendered lands were to be distributed among the land less farmers. Unfortunately the Government could not distribute the land and lot of irregularities took place. The land previously used by tiny farmers in 50% share from the big farmers ultimately landed with no lands and was forced to take up other activities. The land of then big farmers eventually were redistributed among the sons and land holding began to decrease drastically. This made the farming community go down into their knees. The profession of being farmers was not at all attractive and trend for govt. jobs etc rose. The foreigner influx from nearby Bangladesh kept on increasing and this vast unprotected land become an easy breeding ground, at the same time political interest played a vital role.

I had tried to organise easy low cost production of button mushroom project for the mushroom farmers in certain hilly areas where a company was about to help us in the effort. To fund the initial cost of developing our concept the company wanted to trade organic pineapple from those areas for exports. Although we were offering better price than the middleman, But after months of effort we had to back up as the middle man announced that if the farmers sell their pineapples to us then the traders/middleman will not buy their products any more. We also found out that this middleman gave the farmers with finance at a very high rate of interest to produce pineapple and as such the farmers are always in debt to the traders. The farmers are absolutely voice less and are help less and too small as individuals to raise any protest or even negotiate. Their identity is lost.

There is lot more examples of the farmers being exploited in Govt. projects and marketing their products even at times taking away their tiny lands. Today Govt. has come out with a policy to subsidies 50% of the cost of a cold storage but again the rich middle man can only build the cold storage as the cost of building a cold storage is very high for the farmer. As this middlemen are powerful they are influential in the policy making part too.

There are end less ways in which the middlemen are oppressing and exploiting the farmers.

This is a model we are working with mushrooms it can be replicated into any other identity base product with adaptability to customs every where in the world. We have learned a lot from the Amul project and customizing the same thing with our customs and needs. The challenge we face was every one knows about milk but very few knew about mushrooms. Mushroom is almost as nutritious as milk but with out fat.

8) Scale-up strategy: