Exotic veggies, flowers farmers’ answer to climate change

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 10

With climate change emerging as an irreversible phenomenon, threatening livelihood and increasing vulnerability of conventional crops like wheat, paddy and maize, farmers on the periphery of Shimla have shown how the challenge can be met.

Concerned over the adverse impact of climatic changes on crops with snowfall eluding the area for the past 25 years, about 50 farmers of Dhamoon, Baghi, Rampur Keonthal and Chanog villages launched a cooperative venture and diversified to floriculture and exotic vegetable cultivation under the controlled conditions.

As the humble beginning made by the villagers with women folk in the forefront proved a turning point in the lives of the people and their profits rose after setting of the hi-tech green house for growing vegetables with support from the government.

The farmers under the banner of the Mahakali Flowers and Vegetable Growers Marketing Cooperative Society, Jubberhatti, took to organic cultivation of flowers and exotic vegetables like red and yellow capsicum, iceberg and seedless cucumber and started growing 2.5 lakh seedlings in green house without using anything to protect the plants from diseases.

“We are selling plants and vegetable produce in Chandigarh and other markets and also in Shimla and the turnover of the society has swelled to Rs 2 crore,” said Ram Gopal Thakur, president of the society. Even after meeting all costs, the net profit per farmer was above Rs 2 lakh, he added.

The State Environment, Science and Technology Department was providing technical support while the financial support for developing the infrastructure was coming from various programmes and schemes of the government.

During the field visit organised by the Centre for Media Studies, Delhi, to Dhamoon Panchayat last week, villagers explained that how they managed to conserve the scarce water, resorted to precision irrigation and evolved mechanism to supply water to farms turn by turn to avert conflicts.

The green house for vegetable nursery production has been set up by state Agriculture Department under the Centrally sponsored scheme ‘Centre of Excellence’ and 560-sqm land for the green house had been provided by Thakur. The society grows disease-free seedlings in non-soil medium on an area of 560 sqm. The total cost of the project was Rs 60.47 lakh, which included government subsidy of Rs 51.40 lakh.

The controlled farming has also helped the villagers to get rid of wild animals, causing massive damage to crops.

“Farmers are being motivated to preserve and grow traditional crops like red rice, kauni (a type of rice) white butter kidney beans, tangnu (seeds), koda (millet), etc, which are being grown by a few farmers,” said Dr Suresh C Attri, Principal Scientific Officer of the department, adding that besides adaptation, this has also helped in capacity building of women farmers.

Now, members of the society are growing traditional crops like maize wheat, tomato and ginger on the land and also diversifying to other crops which are on the verge of extinction and rotation of crops is also proving a contributing factor in retaining the fertility of the soil and reducing the consumption of fertiliser.

... there is a way

• The farmers formed a society and took to organic cultivation of flowers and exotic vegetables
• They started growing red and yellow capsicum, iceberg, seedless cucumber and 2.5 lakh seedlings in green houses
• The farmers are selling plants and vegetable produce in Chandigarh and other markets and the turnover of the society has swelled to Rs 2 crore
• The green house for vegetable nursery production has been set up by state Agriculture Department