“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
This line has been drilled into our heads since we were children. Let’s imagine for a minute how our lives would be like if we had unlimited access to this red, juicy fruit. Perhaps, our home is in an ? Sounds dreamy right?
Well, for Aprajita Bansal, this was not just a dream. Growing up on an apple orchard in Banon in Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh, this was her reality. However, if urban dwellers believe that the idea of living in an idyllic village in the mountains is charming and are likely to idealise it, the reality is far from it.
But years ago, a young Aprajita found city life alluring. “There was a time when I wanted to run away from this place as I felt there were no opportunities here. People didn’t respect farming then, and I wanted to live in a city,” she admits candidly to The Better India.
Time is a funny thing, and adulthood makes us fall in love with the things we disliked as children. This third generation farmer, too, would find a deep set passion in farming, and ultimately make a career out of it.
To prevent middlemen from ripping off their earnings, Aprajita started selling their farm fresh apples directly online in 2021. In just two hours, she was able to sell 300 kg, ensuring that her parents received the right value for their hard work.
Having a robust Instagram community helped as they immediately jumped on to the opportunity to have fresh apples.
She soon registered her brand name ‘Phal Phool’ through which she sells apples, flower, pulses & vegetable seeds directly to customers. The engineer quit her job a couple of months ago to pursue farming full time, with dreams of practising permaculture and creating a food forest.
Aprajita moved to Bengaluru for a job in 2017. When she visited the market, she was shocked to see the prices of apples! While her parents were struggling to get the right price for their produce in the mandi — with middlemen giving them a pittance — the same apples were being sold for almost Rs 300 per kg.
“I was baffled by how cold storage apples were fetching a better price than sold by my parents. I had seen the painstaking efforts taken by my parents to grow these apples firsthand. Yet, someone else was benefiting,” Aprajita shares.
This incident gave birth to a desire to help her parents which fructified four years later.
A move to Noida a few years later had a pivotal role to play in the engineer unearthing her passion. Fond of decoration and plants, she started growing them. She was a natural at it and her home was soon filled.
“My friends started asking me for ways to grow and take care of plants. Since this was a much asked question, I started sharing tips on home decor and growing indoor plants on Instagram,” shares Aprajita.
Making compost for plants and tending to them also led her into the world of sustainability. Back home in Himachal, climate change had adversely impacted their produce as well. She started looking for ways to combat it, starting with a shift to natural farming.
When she returned home in July 2021, the harvest season, she found that her parents were struggling to 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 that he deserves. After my daughter started selling it online, things have completely changed. I no longer have to worry about the market rate,” says Arun Bansal, who has been farming since 1986.
Pained by what she saw, she decided to help her father get the right price. She asked her Instagram community (which was then about 10,000) if they would be willing to buy their apples, freshly plucked from the farm.
Aprajita runs Phal Phool, a startup that sells apples grown in her family orchard.
To her pleasant surprise, the response was overwhelmingly positive. She hosted a sale online under the brand name ‘Him2Home’, which is rebranded to Phal Phool today.
“My parents were overjoyed and had tears in their eyes. For the first time, they were getting what they deserved,” shares the daughter.
What she found was that people also didn’t know the different varieties and quality of apples that were sold in cities. Farmers like her father, she says, struggle to even get 30-40 percent of the price their products are sold for in the market.
“The apples you find in the market are often last year’s stock stored in cold storage or imported from other countries and stored similarly for extended periods. The apple season in Himachal has just begun, and many middlemen are attempting to clear their old stock,” warns Aprajita.
Over the past three years, she has sold from her farm in July to customers across the country. “We are completely sold out this year too,” she says happily.
She’s been able to give her father three times the profit that he used to receive when he sold them in the mandi.
One of the first things this third generation farmer did over the past few years was move to a more sustainable, natural way of farming. Thanks to work-from-home, she was able to assist her parents on the orchard while continuing her full-time job.
“For the past 4.5 years, we have not used any pesticides or insecticides on the produce. We first worked on reviving the soil health by using cow dung and vermicompost. We are also using a waste decomposer, which contains beneficial microorganisms from the cow dung, crucial for reviving soil health,” she says.
This also increases micro-organisms in the soil, works as a biofertiliser, and provides a congenial environment for the release of nutrients by decomposing the plant/crop residue in the field.
Additionally, they have also planted ‘nitrogen fixer’ plants like mustard and clover, which are also used for mulching. The Bansal family also does mulching thrice a year with the grass grown in their orchard.
Mulching is an agricultural practice where an area of soil is covered with grass and other farm waste which decomposes and improves the soil health.
She also did 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, instead of against it.
“Permaculture is a way of living. Today, most people follow monocropping. Take a look at any forest, you’ll find different kinds of plants growing together. No jungle will have just one plant or animal. Soil health and quality is spoilt because of monoculture. If you grow different crops together, even if one is spoiled, the other will survive,” explains Aprajita.
She explains that the soil health improves as well. She is now working on creating a food forest on a small portion of her parents’ land. Here, she is growing different varieties of native trees and plants. She collects heirloom seeds from across the country and grows them in their orchard.
She remains confident that the soil will be in great condition in the next few years.
“While the apples are more prone to insect bites now and many get damaged, I’m satisfied that we are giving poison-free fruits,” says Aprajita, for whom life has indeed come full circle.
Edited by Padmashree Bhat, Images Courtesy Aprajita Bansal
This line has been drilled into our heads since we were children. Let’s imagine for a minute how our lives would be like if we had unlimited access to this red, juicy fruit. Perhaps, our home is in an ? Sounds dreamy right?
Well, for Aprajita Bansal, this was not just a dream. Growing up on an apple orchard in Banon in Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh, this was her reality. However, if urban dwellers believe that the idea of living in an idyllic village in the mountains is charming and are likely to idealise it, the reality is far from it.
But years ago, a young Aprajita found city life alluring. “There was a time when I wanted to run away from this place as I felt there were no opportunities here. People didn’t respect farming then, and I wanted to live in a city,” she admits candidly to The Better India.
Time is a funny thing, and adulthood makes us fall in love with the things we disliked as children. This third generation farmer, too, would find a deep set passion in farming, and ultimately make a career out of it.
To prevent middlemen from ripping off their earnings, Aprajita started selling their farm fresh apples directly online in 2021. In just two hours, she was able to sell 300 kg, ensuring that her parents received the right value for their hard work.
Having a robust Instagram community helped as they immediately jumped on to the opportunity to have fresh apples.
She soon registered her brand name ‘Phal Phool’ through which she sells apples, flower, pulses & vegetable seeds directly to customers. The engineer quit her job a couple of months ago to pursue farming full time, with dreams of practising permaculture and creating a food forest.
A daughter’s desire to help her father
Aprajita moved to Bengaluru for a job in 2017. When she visited the market, she was shocked to see the prices of apples! While her parents were struggling to get the right price for their produce in the mandi — with middlemen giving them a pittance — the same apples were being sold for almost Rs 300 per kg.
“I was baffled by how cold storage apples were fetching a better price than sold by my parents. I had seen the painstaking efforts taken by my parents to grow these apples firsthand. Yet, someone else was benefiting,” Aprajita shares.
This incident gave birth to a desire to help her parents which fructified four years later.
A move to Noida a few years later had a pivotal role to play in the engineer unearthing her passion. Fond of decoration and plants, she started growing them. She was a natural at it and her home was soon filled.
“My friends started asking me for ways to grow and take care of plants. Since this was a much asked question, I started sharing tips on home decor and growing indoor plants on Instagram,” shares Aprajita.
Making compost for plants and tending to them also led her into the world of sustainability. Back home in Himachal, climate change had adversely impacted their produce as well. She started looking for ways to combat it, starting with a shift to natural farming.
When she returned home in July 2021, the harvest season, she found that her parents were struggling to 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 that he deserves. After my daughter started selling it online, things have completely changed. I no longer have to worry about the market rate,” says Arun Bansal, who has been farming since 1986.
Pained by what she saw, she decided to help her father get the right price. She asked her Instagram community (which was then about 10,000) if they would be willing to buy their apples, freshly plucked from the farm.
Aprajita runs Phal Phool, a startup that sells apples grown in her family orchard.
To her pleasant surprise, the response was overwhelmingly positive. She hosted a sale online under the brand name ‘Him2Home’, which is rebranded to Phal Phool today.
“My parents were overjoyed and had tears in their eyes. For the first time, they were getting what they deserved,” shares the daughter.
What she found was that people also didn’t know the different varieties and quality of apples that were sold in cities. Farmers like her father, she says, struggle to even get 30-40 percent of the price their products are sold for in the market.
“The apples you find in the market are often last year’s stock stored in cold storage or imported from other countries and stored similarly for extended periods. The apple season in Himachal has just begun, and many middlemen are attempting to clear their old stock,” warns Aprajita.
Over the past three years, she has sold from her farm in July to customers across the country. “We are completely sold out this year too,” she says happily.
She’s been able to give her father three times the profit that he used to receive when he sold them in the mandi.
Combating climate change
One of the first things this third generation farmer did over the past few years was move to a more sustainable, natural way of farming. Thanks to work-from-home, she was able to assist her parents on the orchard while continuing her full-time job.
“For the past 4.5 years, we have not used any pesticides or insecticides on the produce. We first worked on reviving the soil health by using cow dung and vermicompost. We are also using a waste decomposer, which contains beneficial microorganisms from the cow dung, crucial for reviving soil health,” she says.
This also increases micro-organisms in the soil, works as a biofertiliser, and provides a congenial environment for the release of nutrients by decomposing the plant/crop residue in the field.
Additionally, they have also planted ‘nitrogen fixer’ plants like mustard and clover, which are also used for mulching. The Bansal family also does mulching thrice a year with the grass grown in their orchard.
Mulching is an agricultural practice where an area of soil is covered with grass and other farm waste which decomposes and improves the soil health.
She also did 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, instead of against it.
“Permaculture is a way of living. Today, most people follow monocropping. Take a look at any forest, you’ll find different kinds of plants growing together. No jungle will have just one plant or animal. Soil health and quality is spoilt because of monoculture. If you grow different crops together, even if one is spoiled, the other will survive,” explains Aprajita.
She explains that the soil health improves as well. She is now working on creating a food forest on a small portion of her parents’ land. Here, she is growing different varieties of native trees and plants. She collects heirloom seeds from across the country and grows them in their orchard.
She remains confident that the soil will be in great condition in the next few years.
“While the apples are more prone to insect bites now and many get damaged, I’m satisfied that we are giving poison-free fruits,” says Aprajita, for whom life has indeed come full circle.
Edited by Padmashree Bhat, Images Courtesy Aprajita Bansal