JOIN USInterested in farming? This series is for you
Long-time friends and engineers by profession Santosh Jadhav and Akash Jadhav set up Indian Farmer in 2018 to empower farmers with knowledge about modern agricultural practices. They decided to take their knowledge in agriculture across the globe through the ‘YouTube Creator Spotlight Series’.
While Santosh comes from a farming background, Akash is an engineer who was fascinated with mobile technology. They decided to combine their strengths to solve the problems the farming community was facing. With a strong 1.63M subscriber base, the duo addresses a wide range of issues in every episode, including drought, irrigation, chemical fertilisers, vermin, and crop science. In an interview with Metrolife, Akash talks about how they shot the series and the challenges they had to face.
You are a farmer’s son and you know farming. Did that inspire you to start this venture?
Yes, it is one of the reasons why we are in the farming business. Right from our childhood, we’ve faced many problems on the field and finding the solutions has always been our quest.
We have exploited all mediums at our disposal. We have read (books), we have talked to different people, and Indian Farmer is
another medium to find those solutions.
Which aspects of farming have you covered in the series?
And how much research goes
into each episode?
In the series, we speak about small aspects. We cover irrigation, fertilisers, insects and insecticides, disease control options, new technology in agriculture, new tractors, AI in agriculture, and satellites for weather forecast.
Apart from that, we talk about allied businesses to agriculture such as fish farming, goat farming, poultry farming are major topics in our videos. And most importantly, we speak about marketing.
We try and explore new marketing strategies for the farmers so they can earn maximum returns on their investment. We are doing research on markets from various places.
We embrace new experiences every day. Even before shooting a video, we do an extensive discussion with our team and we do a lot of R&D on each topic. This brainstorming is integral. Internet, books and these discussions are accompanied by real-time information/experiences by farmers we are connected with. We look for specialised farmers for each crop and we talk to them.
What was the most challenging part of shooting these episodes?
Shooting is challenging because 99% of our shooting is outdoors and it gets quite windy on the farms. So we have bought different gears and mikes to improve the audio quality but we still face some issues. Sometimes, rains (interfere with the shoot).
Sometimes, the sunlight disturbs the lighting setup. Sometimes, we have a cloudy sky. And we don’t have heavy-duty equipment to handle these issues.
Sometimes crops are not in the stage as we would like them to be. For instance, if we wish to show harvesting but the crop hasn’t grown enough on the day of the shoot, we have to compromise there. Location, fields, and wind — these are basic hurdles.
How did you put your engineering background to good use?
Engineering has given me ample and opportunity to explore a lot of things, such as photography, videography and others.
I wanted to channelise these skills for a platform with a good motive. I am happy that I landed on ‘Indian Farmer’. We are trying to do some constructive work through this.