Forty-year-old G. Mahendran anxiously scans his mobile phone screen as he searches for that SMS from Safal, the fruit and vegetable brand of Mother Dairy, a cooperative promoted by the National Dairy Development Board. Until recently, Mahendran, a small farmer in Jarugu in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district, had no way of knowing what price his produce would fetch at auctions. But Safal helps him track it, real time.

That's just one way Safal is endearing itself to farmers. The cooperative also liaises directly with farmers, helps them grade and auction their produce and charges them just 3.5 per cent in commission for all this, as against 10 per cent charged by local mandis.

So Jarugu's farmers have stopped selling their bananas in the marketplace and send their supplies directly to Safal. Not only do Safal stores give the farmers a better grading for their bananas, it also pays them in about a week's time, much quicker than the several weeks it takes middlemen. All this nets farmers much more than what they used to make. "We got nearly double the price offered to us by mandis," says A.K. Govindan, a farmer.

He and Mahendran are among 200 members of Dharmapuri Precision Farmers Association, a cooperative committed to modern farming. Each member has contributed Rs 20,000 to the cooperative, which in turn has floated an agro-services company, Dharmapuri Precision Farmers Agro Services Limited. Operated by and for farmers, the firm uses its capital to buy fertilisers and seeds in bulk, lowering input costs for its shareholders by 5-10 per cent.

Another project helping farmers meet the challenges of new-age retail is the Tamil Nadu Precision Farming Project (TNPFP) run by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU). "The forum has given farmers negotiating power," says I. Muthuvel, assistant project officer, TNPFP. "We have also arranged for crop insurance." TNAU had also organised supply chain training with assistance from the Michigan State University in the US.