Zameen is a farmer-owned marketing and supply chain management company with a business model based on building a direct relationship between producer and consumer.

We work with marginalised farming communities in India to improve livelihoods by increasing incomes and creating efficiencies and by empowering farmers through organisational development.

At the same time, we seek out likeminded companies and form partnerships along our supply chains, accessing more of the value chain for our farmers whilst still ensuring a competitive product for the end consumer.

We help brands engage consumers about the people behind their products.  Traceability, transparency and accountability are at the heart of our core values as well as being our key competitive advantages.

Where we workmap5

In 2006, Zameen chose to set up in Vidarbha in Eastern Maharashtra to help combat the terrible farmer suicide problem, which claims between 500 and 2,000 small-holder lives each year in the region.  Unable to keep up with their debt repayments to moneylenders, famers turn to suicide, often drinking the very pesticides that plunged them into debt.

One year into the project, Zameen expanded into Adilabad in Andhra Pradesh to work with indigenous communities (tribal people or adivasi as they are known locally) where levels of deprivation are extremely high and access to education and resources poor.

Zameen is proud to say its farmers have dramatically increased their incomes – some by up to three times – and none of Zameen’s 5,000 farmers have fallen victim to the suicide epidemic.

Zameen farmers have also used Fairtrade money to develop their communities, choosing for themselves where money is needed most; buying school books, sinking wells and investing back into their farms.