Rajkot: For years, Rajkot homemaker Dipti Santoki has built her family’s kitchen around organic produce sourced directly from farmers, turning their harvest into flavourful meals while ensuring that her family of five eats healthy, pesticide-free food. This year, however, she is having to make a difficult choice: rationing her dwindling pantry reserves to ensure her daughter, a sports professional, continues to get the best possible nutrition to pursue her career.The reason is a devastating drought that has crippled Gujarat’s organic farming belts, leaving farmers who have spent years cultivating direct relationships with urban consumers unable to fulfil their annual commitments. For the first time in years, health-conscious households that relied on their trusted growers for everything from grains and pulses to cold-pressed oils are being forced to look elsewhere.Across Gujarat, the drought has disrupted the increasingly popular ‘family farmer’ model, under which growers cultivate diverse crops on small plots or pool harvests within producer groups to fulfil collective orders, bypassing traditional mandis. Hundreds of urban families, organised through WhatsApp groups, place bulk annual orders for unadulterated farm produce and cold-pressed oils, often maintaining close contact with growers and visiting their farms to check cultivation practices.“I am conservative this year in using our produce, relying on last year’s surplus and buying from the open market only on strict necessity,” Santoki said.The direct-supply chain has now ground to a halt following widespread crop failures. The state govt declared four districts — Jamnagar, Devbhumi Dwarka, Porbandar and Kutch — drought-hit. Jamnagar received just 323mm of rainfall this season against its historical average of 747mm, registering a 57% deficit. For several growers, this is the first season since 2010 that they have been unable to honour customer commitments.Kishor Pedhadiya of Sumir Dhutarpur village in Jamnagar normally supplies 25 to 30 varieties of produce, including wheat, groundnut, cumin, turmeric, chickpeas and mustard, to 250 families. He also regularly documents different stages of cultivation through video updates, keeping customers informed about farm practices.“I informed my customers that this year I am not able to provide them agro produce and asked them to procure from the market or other trustworthy farmers,” Pedhadiya said. “Customers are asking for last year’s leftover produce, but nothing remains. The crop failed entirely due to drought.”Other growers are rationing whatever little harvest has survived.Narendra Sanghani, who cultivates 14 bighas in Nani Bhalsan village of Kalawad taluka and has supplied more than 150 clients for 16 years with products ranging from stevia-based sweeteners to groundnut oil and turmeric, expects his yields to fall by half.“I informed my customers that supplies will be on a first-come, first-served basis because the harvest cannot cover everyone,” Sanghani said.In neighbouring Dadiya, farmer Bhavesh Nanda has suffered a complete loss of his groundnut crop and a 50% loss across spice varieties, forcing him to suspend deliveries to customers.
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