In 2013, Shamshad Zakir Hussain Mulla (44) and her husband Zakir (45) were facing a crisis. The traditional farmers, from Navsari in Gujarat, were being asked to leave their home by Shamshad’s in-laws due to a family misunderstanding. This meant the couple and their children had to move into the half-acre ancestral land that Zakir owned. The family built a house on a patch of the land, and used the remaining portion to begin farming.
Over the next few years, they came to realise that conventional farming methods were not fetching adequate income for the six-member family to survive. Shamshad and Zakir began thinking of other ways. “We were traditional farmers who grew vegetables and sold them in the market. But at times, we ended up buying vegetables because the produce was so little. We needed a way out,” Zakir says.
Shamshad had been producing and selling gulkand, made from rose petals. “We had two plants of the desi variety of rose, and I’d been making edible items for…