Chamba civil engineer takes to apple growing

Balkrishan Prashar

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Chamba, August 9

In a change of heart, a young civil engineer, Sanjeev Kumar, took to growing apple plants on his land in Chachoh village of Saho area in Chamba district. He completed civil engineering in 2015. Thereafter, he started planting a high-density variety of apple in his orchard.

The district administration had also issued a pass to Sanjeev to bring saplings from Uttarakhand during the lockdown period so that he could plant more saplings of high yielding varieties of apple.

Chamba DC Vivek Bhatia along with officials of horticulture, agriculture and rural development departments inspected Sanjeev’s orchard on Friday. The DC said he was very impressed on seeing the apple trees of the progressive orchardist. He asked Sanjeev to grow more as he had set a great example, especially for the youth of the area, by planting about 400 apple saplings in his orchard.

The DC directed officials to motivate budding local orchardists and farmers so that the vast potential of agriculture and horticulture in the district could be used to generate self-employment opportunities. “Chamba has a lot of natural water resources. There is a need to exploit this natural wealth in a planned way to give benefits to farmers and orchardists. People must move away from traditional farming to produce cash crops,” the DC said.