Increasing Income through Skymet-USAID Support
Understanding increasing volatility in the weather pattern and its adversity on agriculture is now a no-brainer concept. Farmers are rapidly losing their income from their farms, following the erratic weather patterns. However, amid all such crisis, farmers in Gaya district of Bihar are revolutionizing agriculture by adopting the poly-house technique and diversifying the crop-mix. Few of the farmers in state are taking up growing vegetable crops, primarily Capsicum by developing poly-houses.
The traditional crops of the region like Paddy, Potato and Onion were been proven less profit-orientated and risk bearing due to the lack of protection measures available against weather vagaries for these crops, whereas in case of poly-house farming, crops could be easily protected. The poly-house technique also provides flexibility in the sowing window which allows farmers to release produce even before the peak arrival season, which help them get better prices. One of the most advantageous features of the poly house is that it grows the nursery and sapling quite well, which could either be used for the sale and for the main field plantation.
Poly-house farming is giving farmers 6 to 7 times more profit than the traditional farming. According to the District Assistant Director (Horticulture), Sri Om Prakash Mishra, under the Front-Line Demonstration (FLD) program of National Horticulture Mission, government is providing 75% subsidy to the farmers to develop such set-ups. He said farmers can earn up-to INR 7 to 8 lakhs per annum by growing Capsicum, Chilli, Cucumber and Strawberry through the ploy house technique.
The USAID-Skymet team in Gaya, facilitated one such registered farmer for setting up poly-house to increase the farm income. Mr Dharmendra Kumar of Bitho Sharif village in Gaya district is associated with the PCSRA project since past 4 years. He says, before being associated with project, he used to be in irresistible risks of weather and many a times he lost the pesticides and other chemicals applied to the fields because of the untimely rains, of which he was not aware. Since he has got associated with the project, he says he gets the timely information about the rainfall and then accordingly plans his activities. He got facilitated to get 75% subsidy to set up the poly-house because of being associated with the USAID-Skymet Project.
Mr. Dharmendra says that earlier he used to get profit of INR 35,000-40,000/- from the same piece of land through which he is currently earning INR 100000-125000/- He said this is quite profitable to build poly-house and grow the vegetables as it saves the crop from the weather extremities on one side and ensure consistent business due to the increasing demand of Capsicum and similar vegetables in the fast food industry.