A basket full of ideas!

Marc Cremer is not your stereotype farmer, as the Indo-German has taken the meaning of farming to a whole new level. And that too, in our very own abercrombie fitch city! "I was born in Pune to an Indian mother and German father, but grew up in Germany. I longed to come to India, and did so when I was young and tried my hand at farming in Mahabaleshwar. Obviously it didn't yield too much money, but I got so enthusiastic about it that I decided to go back to Germany and study farming," says Marc, who went back and studied plant production and attained his PhD from the Berlin's Humboldt University in agricultural engineering. Later, Marc travelled to various countries to work in the agriculture sector in Sri Lanka and Africa. And that's where he met his wife Benedikte, who was visiting Africa from Belgium.

The couple shifted to Pune in 1995, where Marc set up an IT company, but continued to indulge in his passion - farming. "It was only two years ago that Marc decided to sell off his company, and get into farming full-time under the name Green Tokri," says Benedikte, who goes out to the farms to help out her husband with her three Pune-born sons - Tim, Niels and Lars. "When I came to India, it was definitely a culture shock and things were quite difficult in the beginning. However, I guess that's a transition every expat goes through after moving to a new country. But now, I'm so settled that the rickshawallas get pleasantly surprised when I speak to them in Hindi," she reveals.

Explaining further the concept of Green Tokri, Marc says, "I decided to get into salad farming as that's an area underexplored here, but it also has a constantly rising demand due to people becoming more health conscious. Normally the farmers here inherit their land from ancestors and Fendi Bags Replica for manpower, work themselves along with their entire family But here, we had to start fresh - from acquiring land to hiring labour. Land was expensive in Pune and so we bought 104 acres, 30 kms away in Saswad out of which we have developed 20 acres for salad farming." Marc tells us that growing salads through the year is both challenging and resource intensive. So at GreenTokri, they have introduced the latest technologies into the Indian salad farming industry and have had agricultural experts from different countries visit their farmland in Saswad, to consult them on best production systems for growing top quality produce.

And to provide customers Replica NIKE Shox TL3 Shoes with fresh, tasty, and high-quality lettuces, Marc harvests his produce six days a week. "All produce is cleanly processed, packed and sent to our cold storage in Pune. From there, we efficiently deliver to our retailer supermarkets, food stores, restaurants, hotels and even homes of individual customers on their door-steps, so that our salads retain freshness, quality, and nutritional values.

Credit:Preeti Devnani

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http://myjame897q.blogspot.com/2010/07/hot-spuds.html
http://akkakgk.blog.163.com/blog/static/166336436201062025927121/