Guntur Sannam Chilli
Guntur & Prakasam districts · Andhra Pradesh
Every number on this site — a curcumin percentage, an ASTA colour value, a sieve size — is somebody's season. We buy direct from the families who grow it, in collaboration with their groups and cooperatives, and we stay in touch between harvests. These are those people, and the terms we deal with them on.
Nineteen origins, bought from the families who grow them. No trader in the middle, a named person they can reach all year, and volume agreed before the seed goes in.
We buy from the people who grew the crop — farmer families, their grower groups, their cooperatives and farmer producer organisations. There is no trader between us and the field, which is why we can tell you the village a lot came from and why the price the grower gets is a number we can state.
Most lots are bought at the farm or the village collection point, where the crop can still be seen on the ground it grew on. The rest are bought at the regional yard, in the open, against the day's rate. We say which of the two it was rather than calling all of it farm-gate.
Each region has a named buyer who speaks the language spoken there, and who is reachable between seasons and not only at harvest. Sowing plans, weather, disease, a price they have been offered elsewhere — the conversation runs year-round, on the phone and on WhatsApp, in whichever direction it needs to.
Area and expected volume are worked out together before sowing, so a grower knows there is a buyer and we know there is a crop. Collaboration is the commercial arrangement, not a goodwill line — it is the only way the same grower sells us the good lot again next season.
The network we buy through
Bracketed figures are placeholders. States and growing regions are counted from the catalogue on this site; the family and group counts are ours to publish and have not been filled in yet.
Lakadong turmeric is grown on 1,753 hectares of the Jaintia Hills by roughly fourteen thousand farming households across forty-three villages. No holding is large. The 6.8–7.5% curcumin that makes the crop valuable is a product of that scale, not despite it — slow-grown rhizomes on steep ground, no synthetic fertiliser.
Kandhamal Haldi carries a GI tag granted on 1 April 2019 for turmeric grown by Kandha tribal farmers in Odisha. It is organic by default: growers use traditional methods and apply no fertiliser, which means the crop meets a standard it was never designed around. Roughly 13,600 hectares, about 24,000 tonnes a year.
The entire Kashmiri saffron crop grows on about 3,700 hectares of Karewa terrace around Pampore. Flowers are picked before they open fully and the stigmas are hand-detached the same day — Mongra grade is the crimson tip alone, with no style attached. There is no machine step anywhere in that sentence.
None of this is charity and none of it is a certification scheme. It is simply what a buyer has to do if they want the same grower to sell them the good lot again next season.
Area is discussed ahead of sowing, not after the crop is already sitting in a yard looking for a buyer. That is the difference between a price and a relationship.
Lots are priced when the crop lands, against the day's yard rate, in the open. No forward price dressed up as a favour, no deduction discovered after weighing.
If a lot does not make the grade we say so at the yard, where the grower can still sell it elsewhere — rather than accepting it, reconditioning it, and passing the loss back down the chain.
Village, grower group and harvest date travel with the consignment. A buyer in Rotterdam can ask who grew it, and there is an answer.
We are a buyer, not a charity. What we can promise is that the price is the yard price, the rejection happens where the grower can still do something about it, and the name stays on the lot.