Author: Vivek Deshpande
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: February 13, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/reaping-riches-in-suicide-zone/422699/
Introduction: Vivek Deshpande profiles three
farmers who have brought the power tiller, horticulture and record yield of
35 quintals of cotton per acre to Yavatmal Vidarbha, the suicide capital of
the country
Whenever Vidarbha's farm crisis is debated,
the blame is often thrust on the farmers themselves.
But three farmers from Yavatmal - the district
saw maximum farmers' suicides, 222, in 2006 - have finally proved their critics
wrong.
While Abasaheb Deshmukh from Rautwadi village
in Mahagaon tehsil and Anil Rathod from Bhatamba village in Pusad tehsil shunned
traditional crops and shifted to horticulture, Bhagorao Rathod from Tulsinagar
village, also in Mahagaon tehsil, courageously took up innovative cotton farming.
And the results are something that one won't
get to see even in the progressive western Maharashtra.
While Abasaheb, who has taken to grape and
pomegranate cultivation, expects a net profit of Rs 2.5 lakh this year, Anil
is sure of making a whopping Rs 7 lakh in the next 6 to 7 months from the
papaya crop and an intercrop of pomegranate that he has cultivated on his
entire 10 acres of land.
Bhagorao's success, too, should silence critics
of cotton cultivation. He has reaped an unbelievable 35 quintals per acre
- a record in the state according to experts - in a region that is disreputed
for poor yield in the country. Using Bt technology on 16 acres, aided by company
advisors, Bhagorao is all set to laugh his way to the bank with no less than
Rs 7 lakh as profit.
The barely literate farmers are part of a
group of 20-odd farmers from neighbouring villages, who regularly meet, discuss
and practice ways of agrarian prosperity.
"Around three years ago, I started it
with 7-8 friends whom I met during their visits to my veterinary doctor son
Deepak's clinic. We thought why not try something other than cotton,"
says Abasaheb, a lanky man who radiates the energy of a 25-year-old youth.
In the year 2000, Abasaheb shifted to Rautwadi
from a village 8 km away to be able to benefit from a perennial nullah that
flows near the village. He started using drip irrigation system in due course.
"The ideas of grape and pomegranate clicked.
We formed Bajrangbali Dalimb Drakshe Bagayatdar Sangh (pomegranate, grape
horticulturists' union). Some of us visited the grape-yielding areas of Nasik
and met some grape and pomegranate cultivators. A project was submitted to
the National Horticulture Board for their 20 per cent subsidy scheme. The
State Bank, Mahagaon branch, gave me a loan of Rs 4 lakh. I did grape plantation
on two acres and pomegranate on 1.25 acres in inter-cropping fashion. In July
2008, I got my first pomegranate harvest of Rs 1 lakh," he says.
The challenge was daunting. "The crops
require special labour. We get them from Nasik. They stay here for 15 days
at a stretch," says Abasaheb, adding, "I have now learnt to do this
myself."
On his remaining eight-acre farm, Abasaheb
gets a bumper yield of crops like gram, wheat, cotton, soyabean and groundnut.
"Mono-cropping is a bad idea now; we have to innovate," he says.
The success has rubbed off on other conservative
villagers, too. Now, seven other villagers have shifted to pomegranate cultivation.
At Bhatamba, a strange-looking machine at
a papaya farm catches one's attention. "That's a power tiller,"
says farm owner Anil Rathod, adding, "You won't get to see this easily
even in western Maharashtra."
Rathod belongs to Deshmukh's group of innovative
farmers. He chose papaya along with pomegranate. His 14-acre boulder-strewn
farm today has a glowing crop of 5,000 papaya and 5,000 pomegranate plants.
The papaya has an average of 60 to 70 fruits (some even have up to 90) per
plant. Pomegranate will come in next 18 months. "I spent Rs 5 lakh last
year and in next 7- 8 months, I will get Rs 10 lakh from papaya; in another
18 months pomegranate should fetch me Rs 15 lakh," he says.
Rathod quit his construction business to shift
to agriculture two years ago. He has no bullocks and drives the power-tiller
himself.
A little away, at Tulasinagar, Bhagorao Rathod's
sprawling 16-acre Bt cotton field is the cynosure of all eyes. Using drip
irrigation, Bhagorao has reaped 35 quintals per acre from plants that rise
as high as eight feet. In a region that hasn't seen 20 quintals of yield per
acre in an irrigated farm, the produce is no less than a miracle. "Thirty-five
quintals in an acre would easily be a record in Maharashtra though Gujarat
farmers are known to have yielded up to 40 quintals," says Keshav Kranthi,
Director, Nagpur's Central Institute for Cotton Research.
Bhagorao was helped by the Bt company's officials.
"On one hectare, I used the telephone technique (holding the boll-laden
plants aloft with ropes) and I got 35 quintals," Bhagorao tells.
The math goes like this: in each of his 7,260
plants in the telephone-technique, one acre has about 100 cotton bolls. The
average weight per boll is five gram. Thus, each plant produced 500 gram and
all plants together produced about 35 quintals.
"Even the yield of non-Bt crop is up
to 12 quintals per acre as against the region's average of three quintals.
But later, I shifted to more profitable vegetable farming. Bt cotton came
five years ago and I resumed cotton farming three years ago," says Bhagorao.
In the remaining 15 acres also, Bhagorao's
yield is an enviable 25 quintals per acre. "I spent Rs 21,670 per acre
and my income is Rs 50,000. So, on the 15 acres, I earned about Rs 7.5 lakh,"
Bhagorao says.
Not surprising then that Bhagorao's farm has
high-profile visitors like current and former agriculture varsities' vice-chancellors,
scientists and MLAs who cannot help but marvel at these stories of success.
