Ploughing to progress

Viney Sharma 

The North American nation is drawing farmer-entrepreneurs in large numbers from India’s breadbasket — Punjab and Haryana. No, they aren’t the rich ones buying luxury villas in exotic locales. They are the aspiring ones who expect to hit pay dirt as authorities in the former English colony provide agricultural land at abysmally low prices as compared to India. 

“Farmers are going to be driving Lamborghinis,” said global investor Jim Rogers. And adding another dimension to the quote is 43-year-old Sushil Yadav’s thought: “Fund managers will become farmers.”  Considering the plight of the farming sector in India, this may not hold true, but the sons of soil are scripting a different success story in faraway lands with sheer perseverance and there is no dearth of rags-to-riches stories emanating from the Indian diaspora in Canada. 

Reaping dividends

Yadav, who chose farming as his vocation after working in the IT sector for over 15 years in Canada, now has a farm close to the serene Niagara Falls. And he’s not the only one. Almost 37 years ago, when Paramjit Singh Minhas from Kouhja village near Adampur landed in Toronto in 1981, he had no inclination for farming. However, the lack of a suitable job left him with no option but to sow seeds of success. There has been no looking back for Minhas and today, he is the biggest Indian cucumber farmer in Canada. Similarly, Sikh farmer Peter Dhillon is Canada’s biggest cranberry producer and so is Karnail Sidhu, who owns one of the largest wineries — Kalala Organic Estate — in Canada. The list goes on….and doesn’t just include people coming from traditional farming backgrounds.

Three years ago, Yadav and his partner Ramanpreet Kaur, both IT professionals with over 15 years of experience, started their organic farm near Niagra Falls. They gave up their plum jobs with a leading MNC two months ago to dedicate themselves to this venture. “People will never stop eating, so you always have assured consumption,” laughs Yadav. “I scouted many options and finally zeroed in on this sector. It is lucrative and profitable. First, the land is cheap as compared to that in India. It costs anywhere between Rs 7-15 lakh per acre, depending on the location,” he says.

The fact that a number of government and private agencies are ready to fund farming ventures is another advantage for taking to farming here. But, it is not a cakewalk all through. “The focus is always on buying land in the first place, but it is also important to form a corporation and build a credit history of at least two years before actually buying land for farming. That’s how one becomes eligible to avail of the funding options,” says another progressive farmer Kulwant Singh, from Waterloo near Toronto. 

Migration is not new

Punjab and Haryana  are not new to migration of farmers as well as other skilled and unskilled workers. Punjab’s farmers began migrating to greener pastures as early as in the 1850s. Later in 1901, a major exodus of farmers took place mainly from Ludhiana, Patiala and Jalandhar to barren lands near Lahore, now in Pakistan, where the ruling British government of the time established “canal colonies”. These colonies got barren lands under canal irrigation. Punjabis were largely traders or warriors, but not farmers. It was in 1901 when Punjabi farmers realised the agricultural potential in faraway lands. And by the 1950s, farmers started migrating to the United States and Canada.

However, migration among farmers to overseas shores in other states such as Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar started much earlier, in the 16th century during the time of Mughal emperor Akbar. Interestingly, in the latest phase of migration from the Punjab-Haryana belt, though Canada is the hot destination, farmers are trundling to African countries — Kenya, Ghana, Namibia and Ethiopia — as well. These nations are looking for right farming skills and modern practices to boost output to combat poverty.