Food Processing

Project Details

The project aim is to help rural women in villages to generate additional income by way of Agriculture allied activities. Keeping this objective in mind various initiatives are identifies which meet the following objectives -

1. Should help generate additional income of at least INR 60,000 each year for the beneficiary,
2. Should have low gestation time i.e. should be able to give additional income within 6 months for start of the project,
3. Should be simple, suitable to the territory and implementable with available resources in the area.

Keeping that in mind following initiatives are identified:
Food Processing and Marketing:
In this initiative first and foremost important criteria is the availability of raw material in the area and availability of market to sell the final produce at reasonable margin. One example of such initiative we are doing in Telangana and West Bengal is Neem Seeds processing. Due to large availability of Neem Seeds in the area, it was decided to work on the initiative to procure local available raw material, process it to make marketable products and create market linkages to sell them in the market. Women in local area are trained on making oil and cake from the Neem seeds. Then they are provided with the initial machinery and raw material. Pipal Tree takes care of market linkages for the final produce and ensures that women earn at least INR 5000 to 6000 per month for this activity after provisioning for the raw material and other cost. Eventually the model could be made sustainable from market linkages on the final produce.