About Us
A Group of convicted Organic farmers had come forward with a vision to empower small margin farmers in Organic & Fair Trade activities in their farms, educate them about the sustainable production of spices, coffee, cocoa & tropical fruits and vegetables
Manarcadu Social Service Society
Fairtrade and Organic Products
A Group to support the farmer cooperative by financing, coordinate in getting Organic Certification, Fairtrade Certification, and procure produces from farm gates by offering a fair price to them. MASS founded with a vision to promote Organic & Fairtrade products to International level with the following objectives:-
To enhance Agriculture produce / productivity and improve the quality and status of small farmers in Kerala,India.
To ensure premium prices for the products produced by the beneficiary farmers in the project
To enhance the production and productivity of Spices, Coffee, Cocoa in the project area for improving the standard of living of the people.
To cater the increased demand of organic spices, coffee, cocoa from International market to the entire satisfaction of the end customer and build long term trade partnership.
To improve the soil fertility and soil health of the project area to ensure sustainable farming and production.
To avoid hazardous agri-chemicals with the ultimate objective of avoiding residues, resurgence and resistance in crop production system.
We Manarcadu Social Service Society strictly adhere to the forms of National Standards For Organic Production – Government of India, U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (USDA NPOP) and European Union (EU) Regulations 834/2007 and maintain a well structured Internal Control System (ICS) for assisting the farmers on organic farming, documentation and to ensure that the system conforms to organic standards.
The Processing Unit is envisage to with cleaning, grading, pulping, drying, and grinding facilities for maintaining the quality as per the international standard for exporting organic spices procured from farmer cooperatives. It is equipped with an in-house Quality Assurance Laboratory.
Major Products
Fairtrade & Organic Black Pepper
Fairtrade & Organic Dehydrated Green Pepper
Fairtrade & Organic Turmeric Fingers & Powders
Fairtrade & Organic White Pepper
Fairtrade & Organic Ginger
Fairtrade & Organic Cardamom
Fairtrade & Organic Nutmeg
Fairtrade & Organic Mace
Fairtrade & Organic Cinnamon
Fairtrade & Organic Vanilla
Fairtrade & Organic Clove
Fairtrade & Organic Coffee( Robusta & Arabica)
Raw Materials & Its Availability
The main raw material required for the unit is Spices, which are available through our net work in Kerala.
Manarcadu Social Service Society having Member strength of 400 plus Small & Marginal farmers having land areas of 0.5 Hectares to 4 Hectares and planting area located in Hi-ranges of Kerala and Farms are up to -1600m MSL. The real steep areas are facing lack of transportation facility, and looting of Village traders. Now after our Intervention and implementation of FT System, our group of Small Farmers can share the information about the Prices, Cost of Production and Quality upgradation at Group Level. We are sending updated Market Prices based on the grades to each farmer by SMS. Now we started Farmer driven Collection centers at these hilly areas. Our procurement team will regularly visit such collection centres and bringing commodities to our main factory at Manarcadu.
We started subsidized supply of Agri-inputs like Biopesticides for eg. bevarria, copper sulphates to our farmers in Fairtrade Premium Projects in order to support each village level sub Committee in Quality Upgradation and Processing. We supplied Pulping machines, solar Tunnel Dryers at unit level to produce Value added Washed coffees for the forthcoming harvest season. We are providing rapid training courses to our Women Farmer Members in ‘selective plucking’, ‘processing’ and ‘proper storage’ to overcome the skilled labour shortage; to an extent.. Besides all these, we are providing ‘Plant Doctors’ to extent free technical support to our farmers for the production and processing of coffee.
We also promote inter-cropping with pepper, ginger, medicinal crops, cardamom, vanilla, cinnamon, Nutmeg & banana grow alongside coffee plants income. These supplemental crops can contribute up to 20-30% of total revenue.
The possibility of mechanization exists especially in the lower or medium sloped areas. Hence we are planning to Purchase Weed Cutters, sprayers and other agricultural implements for our Village Level farmer Groups from Fair Trade Premium Projects. We believe that living standards of the populations involved in coffee by securing adequate support which will motivate them to maintain quality rather than the amount of coffee produced to promote the use of environmentally friendly technologies
MASS is purchasing certified spices from certified farmers process at our own processing centers and exporting organic spices, coffee, cocoa as per NOP/ European Union/ Fairtrade standards..
Export documentation and administration work are being done at the centralized office of MASS at CSI Commercial Centre, Kottayam.
The Elected Board of Directors would directly handle the overall supervision of the procuring, processing, packing, storing and forwarding with the support of a qualified and experienced export executive , supply chain officer , a Production Manager, chief Accountant and skilled workers.
In view of above We MANARCADU SOCIAL SERVICE SOCIETY would like to tie up with feasible, economically viable and commercially sound Fairtrade / organic projects for its long term partnership..