How Raghunathan Narayanan is changing the lives of farmers in seven states with a three-fold model

Raghunathan Narayanan, the co-founder of the Bengaluru-based Catalyst Group, has been instrumental in transforming the lives of farmers across seven states through an innovative three-fold model that views farming not just as a livelihood, but as an enterprise.

This has helped created a tangible impact for thousands of small farmers in India who are reaping the benefits of a transformation that focuses on wealth building through diverse elements—soil health, biodiversity, water management, and income generation through sustainable agricultural practices.

The seeds of inclusion, empathy, and the desire to “give back” were sown in Narayanan’s childhood through the lessons learnt from his grandmother, Lakshmi paati.

Growing up in Pudukkottai, a town in Tamil Nadu in a middle-class family, Narayanan remembers his grandmother providing space for the farmers who came in from villages in and around the town–offering them a place to stay overnight, to eat or take rest, and engaging them with easy banter. Being upper-caste did not stop his grandmother from doing this.

“When asked how she was allowing these, she retorted with, “Just see your own fingers, not all of them are of the same height or width. All fingers need to be there and operate together to get work done. Everyone is different and unique and we can all be together to get things done,” he tells SocialStory.

Narayanan carried this generosity and liberal thought through his childhood and understood there should always be a dignity attached to giving.

After his schooling, following in the footsteps of his brothers and cousins who chose engineering, he enrolled in an agri-engineering course at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. The “field” component of the course introduced him to on-ground work and engineering practices applied to agriculture.

After completing his course, he headed to the Indian Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) in Anand, Gujarat, where he witnessed first-hand Dr Verghese Kurien’s solutions-driven approach with his vision of People Professional Partnership. “What looked very complex became simple at IRMA,” he says.

Narayanan carried this vision of keeping people at the centre forward when he started Catalyst Management Services in 1994 along with his batchmate, Shiv Kumar. Initially, they adopted the consultancy approach that gave way to a “systems change” approach as they built the Catalyst Group from ground up.

Two organisations were established—Vrutti, which works with small and marginal farmers through its flagship three-fold model, and Swasti that aims to transform the lives of the marginalised communities by ensuring their access to quality healthcare.

Elaborating on the focus of the three-fold model, Narayanan says, “The first step was the mindset shift of a farmer moving from a beneficiary role to that of an entrepreneur—with his farm as an enterprise. For livelihood transformation, it was imperative to consider the family as an enterprise, and that became the second goal. The third was to create a bundle of services that was beneficial to them.”

A model for all-round growth

 Essentially, the three-fold model starts with mobilising farmers in a particular area into farmers’ collectives. These form a cluster-level collective and later it becomes a farmer producer company.

Vrutti has a 160-member team, which in the second stage, engages with farmers on ground looking at the local agro-ecological zones, scouts market opportunities, and selects three major commodities, for example, in Pudukkottai it is black gram, groundnut, and jackfruit. It also looks at diverse livelihood options like livestock, poultry, etc. The third outlook is non-farm where five or six enterprises are identified to engage with farmers to create a livelihood improvement plan.

Under this model, farmers can increase their net income by reducing costs, and increasing productivity through biopesticides, better practices, access to formal credit, and accessing the right government schemes to help them in the first stage. The second stage of the model focuses on increasing income through diversification and improved prices through better market linkages, selling value added products.

 “When we talk about three-fold model, it’s about increasing the position of smallholder farmers by three-fold. The first onus is on wealth, the second is resilience, and the third is on responsibility,” he sums up.

Vrutti began its pilot in Raoti in Madhya Pradesh, and then Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu based on different factors like the agro-ecological zone, market maturity, socio-cultural issues, and the political climate.

Most of Vrutti’s initial support came from Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFACs), and NABARD gave them a Rs 10 lakh rural innovation fund and various social protection schemes. They have impacted around 1,40,000 farmers in seven states.

Narayanan says that there was initial scepticism from the FPOs, because of existing trade relationships that are also social in nature.

“There were two barriers – breaking the relationship. The second was people have to pay for the services, every FPO that engages with Vrutti has to pay a retainer fee. Over a period of time, we were able to break through these barriers,” he says.

Entrenched in the ecosystem as an enabler of growth for farming communities, Narayanan moved with a renewed focus by starting producer-centric digital platform--Platform for Inclusive Entrepreneurship (PIE). It is built on the principles of ‘Societal Platform’ or being an open-source infrastructure that can be actively built upon to serve the needs of stakeholders.

Partnering with Industree and Social Venture Partners, this end-to-end platform connects farmers, major buyers (such as Bigbasket), services and providers (such as creditors, training modules, market information and market linkages), which has enabled farmer groups/organisations to access a wide range of services, allowing for transparency in pricing and better options for its users.

“We have 18,000 farmers of Vrutti operating on this platform, and is also available to others. We are also looking at approaching every agency, resource institution, cluster-based business organisation or NGO like Vrutti to scale this up. The idea is with the click of a button, a farmer or a farmer institution will have access to information—like a farmer advisory, how to develop a farm plan, what opportunities exist in a particular value chain, the training and skills needed and more,” he adds.

(This copy has been updated to add Industree as a partner.)