Organisation launched in India to promote organic produce

In a bid to help organic farmers while promoting healthy eating, an organisation has been set up for the purchasing of organic produce from farmers at their farms, to be sold to residents of Vellore and Ranipet districts in e-vehicles. According to a report by The Hindu, Arun Kishore and Karthikeyan partnered up with the Certified Organic Farmers Association to provide free training to farmers and convert them to organic methods of agriculture from conventional farming methods. The new organisation, called EPPO, procures products from farmers at their respective farms and delivers them to people’s doorsteps using two e-vehicles.

“Each vehicle has 22 racks with packed organic vegetables. The vehicles go through the streets of Vellore and Ranipet playing audio announcements about the benefits of such produce,” said Arun Kishore.

“The organic farmers, on the other hand, are unaware about marketing strategies. Hence we directly procure vegetables from the farmers at a price that brings them profit, grade them and sell the good quality produce to the residents,” said G.S. Purushoththaman, director of the Organic Farming Organisation and president of the Certified Organic Farmers Association. He added that across Tamil Nadu, there are one lakh organic farmers and around 10,000 in Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Tirupathur and Ranipet. “The government of India has authorized the Organic farming Organisation Vellore as the Regional Council for Participatory Guarantee System to certify the organic products produced by the farmers since 2011,” he said.

Arun Kishore said that farmers do not have time to come to the towns and sell their products.

“We sell them to the public and the amount is used to pay our staff and maintain the e-vehicles. We are trying to introduce this system in Chennai too.”