Last stop: Bhawanipatna

After stops in Gujarat, Central Maharashtra, and Hyderabad, today I landed up at my last stop – Bhawanipatna, Orissa.  It’s Seth again, Shop For Change’s CEO, winding up my tour to film interviews with some of the fair trade farmers we’re associated with and who are responsible for the crops behind Shop for Change Fair Trade certified products.  Here in Orissa I’m meeting again with cotton farmers who are members of Chetna Organic Agriculture Producer Company.  These are the farmers who have produced the cotton in the fabric being used by Anita Dongre, among others.

Bhawanipatna is in western Orissa, and to say some of the surrounding villages are off the beaten path is an understatement.  The highlight of the trip was our second day’s journey to visit one of the villages where Chetna has set up a field office.  The journey started in a four wheeler.  The road transitioned from pavement to dirt, and when that ran out we put our filming gear into rucksacks and climbed onto bikes.  That worked until we reached the river, and then we rolled the bikes onto a raft and floated across to finish up our journey.  Once we reached, we were greeted by Chetna’s field staff and farmers and had a fantastic lunch of organic sabji and rice grown right in the area.  With stomachs full we spent the rest of the day learning about how cotton is grown in the area and the difference that Chetna and fair trade is making to the farmers.

Now that that filming is done we’re hitting the editing room, and with the help of our friends at Sourcemap we’ll soon be able to share the interviews with you on a super-cool web based format.  ‘Til then, keep an eye on the blog for updates or sign up for our newsletter at http://conta.cc/c90rzL.