Seema Sayyed & the Benefits of Collectives

Seema Sayyed, a grassroots woman leader, farmer and entrepreneur lives in a large joint family in Shiradhon village in Kallam Block of Osmanabad District. Coming from a conservative Muslim household, Seema tai faced many struggles when she first joined Swayam Shikshan Prayog in 2007.

Over the years, as she gained recognition from the local government and community members, her family grew to accept her role as a member of SSP, that required her to travel away from home and work amongst the larger community. Since joining SSP, Seema tai and her family started cultivating vegetables on their farm for household use and to sell in markets. From 2013 onwards, as SSP began promoting the integrated WCRF model and Seema tai learnt the benefits of livelihoods diversification, she slowly started businesses linked to dairy, clothing, stationery, animal feed (azola) cultivation and vermicompost. However, due to costs of transporting products, unscrupulous middlemen, and difficulty in accessing loans, Seema tai, like many small business owners found that there was a limit to which she could expand her business individually.

When SSP started focusing on developing rural value chains in Maharashtra and Kerala in the past few years, Seema tai attended trainings on Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and the benefits of organising and running businesses collectively. When asked about why she started an FPO with fellow women entrepreneurs, she explains it simply, “When we start a business together, we are reducing the risk that an individual woman must bear. If I was running my business independently and suffered a loss of Rs.1000, it would cripple my business. But in a collective, we each face a loss of Rs. 200 and can bear the setback and move ahead. Further, in a collective business we can access resources more easily, especially from banks and the government. Market dealers also respond to us better and are willing to take a chance on us if we are working together.”