K’shetra farmer promotes use of vermicompost

Vishal Joshi

Advertisement

For 33-year-old progressive farmer and entrepreneur Karan Sikri, fortune lies in animal waste at gaushalas.

His team buys and collects cow dung in the 20-km radius of his native village Dhangali, about 10 km from the National Highway-44, at Shahabad Markanda town in Kurukshetra district. 

Sikri, a national award-winner, is credited with setting up one of the largest vermicompost fertiliser manufacturing units in the country.

The Central government has duly recognised Sikri's efforts to produce vermicompost with cow dung and promote drip irrigation.

In July this year, Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu gave away the national Village Entrepreneur award to him at a function in New Delhi. Last year, he received the National Jagjivan Ram Kisan Abhinav award of the Indian Centre of Agriculture Research.

Sikri is an MBA from Delhi University and took up farming out of passion. “I belong to a family of traditional farmers. I always had zeal for innovation in this field. I was just 18 years’ old when I established a small vermicompost unit at our farm in 2004. I visited several countries to study sustainable farming with controlled use of chemicals,” he says.

Gradually, he started expanding vermicompost production and established a unit with a capacity of 25,000 metric tonnes. He says the key motive behind establishing the unit is to promote the idea to save soil and water.

“Organic vermicompost enriches soil with micro organisms. It is important to sensitise farmers to the optimum use of organic manure and chemicals to make farming a profitable occupation and protect the environment from undue use of chemicals,” says Sikri.  

“By setting up a compost unit, we have offered a solution to rural hygiene problems by using animal dung to make fertilisers. Any committed farmer with an enterprising spirit can emulate the model to increase agriculture income and reduce input cost,” he adds.

Today, Sikri is supplying vermicompost fertiliser to hundreds of farmers and nursery owners in Haryana, Himachal, Punjab, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.

Karamchand, Deputy Director, Agriculture, says Sikri’s vermicompost unit at Dhangali village is the biggest in north India and he has developed a workable and successful model of sustainable farming.

Sikri has developed a learning centre for young agricultural students and enterprising farmers where they are taught how to produce vermicompost for organic farming, and about subsurface irrigation, dairy farming, drip irrigation, beekeeping, organic honey manufacturing, animal husbandry and high-tech farming.

“I am working to set up more farms in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. To learn new farming techniques, I have been travelling extensively to different countries, including Israel, Australia and China. I have imported machines from Hong Kong for the vermicompost unit,” says Sikri.