Aprajita Bansal grew up on an apple orchard in Banon, Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh.
While she initially worked in a city, the third-generation farmer soon discovered her passion for farming and made a career out of it.
When the engineer first moved to Bengaluru for a job, she was shocked by the price of apples sold in the market.
While her parents struggled to get the right price for their produce in the mandi, the same apples were selling for almost Rs 300 per kg.
“I was baffled by how cold storage apples were fetching a better price than farm-fresh apples sold by my parents. I had seen the painstaking efforts taken by my parents to grow these apples first-hand. Yet, someone else was benefitting,” Aprajita shares.
She then moved to Noida, where she started growing plants and decorating her home, sharing tips on Instagram.
Making compost for her plants and tending to them also led her into the world of sustainability. Back home in Himachal, climate change had impacted their produce. She started looking for ways to combat it.
When she returned home in July 2021, she decided to help her parents get the right price for their produce.
“Earlier, we had to go to Delhi to sell our apples. Later, mandis opened up in Himachal. Due to middlemen, no farmer ever gets the full value. After my daughter started selling online, things have changed,” says Arun Bansal, Aprajita’s father.
Aprajita asked her Instagram community (which, at the time, was about 10,000 people strong) if they would be willing to buy apples freshly plucked from the farm.
The overwhelming response led to the birth of ‘Phal Phool’. “My parents were overjoyed and had tears in their eyes. For the first time, they were getting what they deserved,” she shares.
“The apples you find in the market are often last year’s stock stored in cold storage or imported from other countries. The apple season in Himachal has just begun, and middlemen are attempting to clear their old stock,” warns Aprajita.
Over the past three years, she has been selling freshly harvested apples from her farm every July to customers across the country.
What’s more, she has helped her father get three times the profit!
Aprajita also sells flower, pulses, and vegetable seeds directly to customers through her brand.
Besides selling their produce directly to customers, she has also moved to a more sustainable, natural way of farming.
“For the past four and a half years, we have not used any pesticides or insecticides on our produce. We first worked on reviving the soil health by using cow dung and vermicompost,” she says.
Additionally, they have planted ‘nitrogen fixer’ plants like mustard and clover, which are also used for mulching.
Aprajita completed a course in permaculture from Aranya Agricultural Alternatives in Hyderabad. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the harmonious integration of nature and humans, where one lives with nature.
She is now working on creating a food forest on a small portion of her parents’ land.
Read the full story here.