On a morning in Sirampur village in Odisha’s Khordha district, a group of women look towards the sky as a drone moves over acres of farmland. One of them holds the remote controller while the machine sprays a fine mist of fertiliser over the crops below.

For women farmers here, spraying an acre once meant walking through the field with a heavy tank strapped to the back, spending hours at work while being exposed to chemicals. Today, a drone can spray an acre in about six minutes and cover up to 25 acres in a day.

At the heart of this shift is 40-year-old Kumudini Swain, fondly known as Odisha’s ‘Drone Didi’.

A pandemic and an unexpected return to farming

“I had never imagined that in just a few years, we would build something of this scale,” Kumudini tells The Better India, reflecting on a journey that began during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Armed with a BSc degree, Kumudini had spent years working in Odisha’s dairy sector, including with Milk Mantra and Sundarani Dairy. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, everything came to a halt. The company she and her husband worked for shut down, leaving them without a livelihood.

“We came back home with our two sons. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. That’s when we turned to the only thing we had: our land,” she says.

On their two-acre farm, the family began cultivating vegetables. What started as a survival measure soon showed Kumudini that farming could also become a viable livelihood. 

As the months passed, she began looking beyond what was happening on her own land. Around her were other farmers facing many of the same problems she had encountered: limited access to better inputs, uncertain markets and few ways to increase what they earned from farming.

“I started wondering, if this works for us, why not for others in the village?”

That question stayed with her. Kumudini began speaking to farmers around her, trying to understand what they needed and whether they would be willing to work together. The idea was simple at first: if farmers could pool resources, access training and find better ways to grow and sell their produce, perhaps farming could become more viable for more families.

Getting a thousand farmers to build together 

Those conversations eventually took shape as Maheera Farmer Producer Company Limited (FPCL). What began with Kumudini reaching out to farmers in and around her village has since grown into a collective of 960 members.

With support from Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) Khordha and NGO NIGAM, Kumudini began mobilising farmers, many of them women. Getting people to trust a new collective, and invest their own money in it, took time.

“Convincing people was the hardest part,” she recalls. “Most didn’t want to invest money. I had to spend from my own pocket at times and keep explaining why this would work.”

The initial capital came from farmers themselves, with Rs 5 lakh raised through share contributions, alongside a loan from Samunnati Finance. That money slowly began taking physical shape around them. The team leased five acres, built a 12,000 sq ft mushroom unit, planted fruit trees and set up a poultry shed. 

For Kumudini, each........

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