"I will carry on – despite the hardships."

"These days it’s tough. The harvest, the house, the kid’s school, the weather – you name it. Everything seems to be set to be hard on me these days. When I got married and moved to my husband’s place, we started organic farming on our 2-acre farm growing mostly cotton. It has been going fine – I would not say it has been great but we were making a living.

But lately the harvests have been decreasing. While others seem to be doing fine, in our fields we are in bad luck. This year is special – this year is bad for everyone. The rains have been scarce during the growing period and are coming now, now when we are just about to start the cotton harvest. When it rains, the cotton bolls start rotting while they are still on the plant. It's hard to watch your income rotting away in the field. Of course, we grow other crops, soybean, chickpea, wheat, maize, vegetables, onions, okra, and chilli – everything we need for our own food. What we don’t eat ourselves, we sell at the local market.

But cotton is still our main source of income. The plan would be to save some money that we get from the cotton to renovate our house. Now, with the rains, it is not really comfortable, we have a leaking spot in the roof so we have to prepare when it rains at night. We can already save some money for our oldest son, we put it in the bank so that we can afford a good education for him in the future. At the moment, with the Covid virus, getting a good education for our two sons is difficult. They go to a government school, but this school has not been running properly ever since the pandemic started, the teachers don’t show up, I don’t know what is going wrong with this place.

With all this work: farming, working for other people on their farms, taking care of the kids, cooking, getting water, I sometimes feel tired and weak. It would be nice if life would take it easy on me sometimes. But I will carry on – despite these hardships. We will manage, somehow. But there are also nice things, you know. For the farm I have high hopes in Remei India Ltd, the organisation that supports us and buys our organic cotton. And for me, maybe I can learn how to sew so that we can make some extra income through that. A festival is coming up soon, we fast during the day – and eat just one meal, we still have to work. Afterwards we will gather with all our neighbours, we will sing and I get to dance. I’m looking forward to that. Now, would you like to stay for dinner? I will grill you some fresh corn from my field."

Salita Bhaware is 32 years old and lives in Kakadkhodri. She and her husband Jitendra Nankiya have been registered organic cotton farmers with Remei India Ltd since 2015.

More portraits

fibl.org: Faces of Organic Cotton