Sustainable Agro Inc - SAI

SAI Sustainable Agro was formed to address the fact that just grants, charity, technology and markets alone cannot bring small and marginal farmers ou Read moret of poverty. It attempts to make the farmers their partners in business instead of just members. The organisation intends to bring together communities, companies, government, investors, technical experts and entrepreneurs to work together and drive out poverty sustainably and permanently. Its agroforestry model promotes agriculture along with use of land for growing raw materials that are required by modern industries like paper mills and herbal products. This model also improves the soil’s humus content and makes it highly fertile. It even takes care to help rural landless youth by training them to handle crops and material in the harvesting season and transportation activity. SAI identifies rural youth to act as their representatives, training them to become community resource persons. They are inducted as employees of the organisation post successful training and are employed to provide personal support to farmers, for which they are paid a salary and incentives. Its business model includes an agreement with the paper mills and herbal product industries that they will buy their raw materials from SAI at current or future price whichever is higher at the time of harvesting. SAI then goes ahead to conduct door-to-door campaigns among the small and marginal farmers, building their capacity, organising agriculture equipment, providing doorstep delivery of inputs like finances, technical monitoring and support throughout the production cycle of the raw materials asked for by the industries. On harvest SAI connects the farmers to the supply chain and ensures buy back of the raw materials at the market price due to Its linkages with the market. Due to the success of Its agroforestry model It has received requests from Africa, specifically from Uganda, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya to replicate it there. SAI along with local partners is rolling out this model to benefit farmers there. Its agroforestry activity helps the environment by reducing carbon footprints due to the reforestation and use of fallow lands to plant trees increasing the land’s productivity and contributing to green cover. Its main products are Eucalyptus pulpwood, Finger millets, Brahmi, Mahua, Herbal oils and Non timber forest produce like Amla, Shikakai, Giloy and Moringa.