Before We Ask a Farmer to Plant

Founder’s field note · English companion to Dilip Parab’s Marathi reflection of 26 October 2026.

People who visit our farm and factory often ask a practical question: “If we plant lemongrass, will you buy our grass?”

It is a reasonable question. Before a farmer commits land, labour and money to a crop, they want to know where it will go. An encouraging answer is easy to give. Building an arrangement that works for the farmer is much harder.

Our experience at Sugandha begins with growing lemongrass, distilling its oil, developing products and selling them. That has given us a working connection between the field and the customer. It has also made us more careful about recommending the same model to someone else.

The journey to the still is part of the crop

Once extracted, oil occupies little space. The cut grass from which it comes is a very different load. Harvesting, gathering, loading, transport and unloading all sit between the farmer’s field and the distillation vessel.

In our own work, these operations are part of the daily calculation. When another farm joins the chain, its distance from processing must enter that calculation too.

The question is therefore larger than whether a factory is willing to accept the material. After getting it to that factory, processing it and selling what it produces, what remains with the farmer?

I cannot give every village the same distance limit. The road, the vehicle, how fully it can be loaded, the number of trips and the terms of purchase all matter. A willingness to buy is not yet a workable collection system.

What the work has changed in my thinking

Building a fragrance industry in Konkan does not mean bringing every village’s raw material to our own factory. It means understanding where cultivation, collection and processing can work together.

That is why the next step cannot simply be a list of more valuable crops. We are studying vetiver and Chafa, but a high-priced bottle does not explain the work required to produce its contents.

For vetiver, the questions include the roots, the effort of harvesting and cleaning them, storage and the processing they require. For Chafa, they begin with identifying the plant and understanding how flowers can become a consistent aromatic material. These are questions guiding further work; this note does not report completed local crop trials.

Developing a perfume using a sourced aromatic material and producing that material from locally grown plants are separate stages. Our present farm-distillation experience is with lemongrass. Other aromatic materials used in our products include selected sourced oils. We should be clear about that distinction as the project grows.

Three questions before a recommendation

1. Will the crop grow here? Consider the actual site and its conditions.
2. Can it produce the material the buyer needs? A living plant and a consistently usable aromatic material are different outcomes.
3. Can the work support a viable livelihood? Include labour, transport, processing and the time before payment.

A “yes” to the first question does not answer the other two. Nor does another region’s experience settle all three for Konkan.

What we need to record next

To move beyond reflection, we need dated records that connect the work: the source and condition of a load, its measured weight, the route and transport cost, the distillation conditions, the oil recovered and the basis used to calculate yield.

Comparisons need context. If harvest timing, handling or equipment changes, that needs to appear beside the result. An unsuccessful attempt should remain in the notebook, with the question it helped us answer.

Farmer conversations need the same care: place, date, permission and the person’s own words. Their experience should be distinguishable from my interpretation.

These are the records we intend to develop and share through The Konkan Fragrance Project. This article is a founder’s reflection on the practical problem, not a batch dataset, controlled experiment or promise of returns.

A promise carries someone else’s work

Behind “Will you buy our grass?” are someone’s land, savings, effort and trust. Enthusiasm alone is not a sufficient answer.

I want Konkan’s fragrance to travel. I also want the knowledge, skill and value created through that work to take root here. The next step is to make the questions, the trials and the real costs visible enough for better decisions.

— Dilip Parab
The Konkan Fragrance Project

About this note: Adapted in English from the founder’s published Marathi account. It contains no new batch measurements, farmer interviews or laboratory results. For the longer discussion and its external research references, read the original Marathi article.