At a time when dragon fruit used to be no longer widespread in Maharashtra, Mahesh Asabe arrange a successful trade with dragon fruit cultivation. These days, he leads the way in which through incomes Rs 10 lakh consistent with acre within the water-scarce Solapur district.
One of the crucial drought-prone districts of Maharashtra, Solapur struggles to finish its water woes. With unseasonal rains and hailstorms, farmers of the district had been bearing the brunt of local weather exchange and unheard of agricultural losses over the previous few many years.
Apparently, Mahesh Asabe, an leading edge farmer from the dry Akola village of the district, has made agriculture a profit-making sector within the dry area. He has led the way in which with dragon fruit cultivation and is now incomes Rs 10 lakh consistent with acre.
“Historically, we’ve got been rising pomegranates, custard apples, and grapes. With local weather exchange, it’s been tough to domesticate those plants,” Mahesh tells The Higher India.
“These days, we revel in unseasonal rains and hailstorms. From time to time, we get rain all over the harvesting length of grapes. This washes away our 12 months’s price of exhausting paintings. Moreover, there was an unheard of build up in the price of fertilisers over time. It jointly made farming unprofitable,” provides the 27-year-old.
We sat down with the younger farmer to know the way he reaped earnings after switching to dragon fruit cultivation.
A dicey experiment
Since his adolescence, Mahesh dreamt of changing into a farmer. To form his goals into truth, he went on to review agricultural engineering after which finished his grasp’s in meals processing and engineering from Udaipur, Rajasthan, in 2020.
It used to be all over his commencement years that the engineer examine dragon fruit farming in {a magazine}. “Because it belongs to the cactus circle of relatives, dragon fruit calls for much less water and nutrient necessities. It has a existence expectancy of 20-25 years and offers more than one harvests in a 12 months,” he explains.
“It has a top benefit-to-cost ratio, can live on the top summer time warmth and may also be cultivated in any roughly harsh land,” he provides.
“I understood that it used to be the longer term crop of farming and lets earn handsomely with dragon end result even in dry areas like ours,” Mahesh says.
So, in 2012, he went to Bangladesh to obtain dragon fruit saplings. He purchased 9,000 saplings on the charge of Rs 110 each and every and planted them on 3 acres of land.
With top hopes, he had invested the circle of relatives source of revenue of as much as Rs 17 lakh to organize the farmland and plant the brand new crop that used to be nonetheless unknown to numerous farmers within the area.
What came about subsequent devastated him.
Turning perils into alternatives
After a 12 months of planting the crop, Mahesh didn’t get even a unmarried fruit out of the 9,000 saplings. “I used to be very younger and I used to be wondered about my resolution to domesticate dragon end result. Once we were given 0 returns within the first 12 months, I began feeling depressed. We didn’t also have some other trade to live on on,” he stocks.
Mahesh realised that the saplings he procured weren’t mature. “Preferably, the mummy saplings will have to had been two years outdated. We were given fooled with the produce. So, it took us two entire years to get returns from the crop,” he provides.
Probably the most different demanding situations earlier than Mahesh used to be a lack of know-how from consumers about this fruit, which closely impacted the crop’s call for. “No person knew what dragon fruit used to be. Once we controlled to get some produce, we took it to the marketplace. Other people doubted that this could even make any sale,” he says.
To triumph over those demanding situations, Mahesh opened a YouTube channel to make farmers mindful in regards to the perks of dragon fruit farming which in flip ended in a upward thrust in intake of the fruit. Over the years, he received excellent viewership and began attracting farmers to his box.
The revolutionary farmer has transform an instance for a number of different farmers within the area. He has additionally opened the doorways of his ‘Rukmini Farms’ to function demonstration fields for others who want to develop dragon end result.
His farm has been visited through a minimum of 35,000 farmers from throughout Maharashtra. Of those, he has skilled and helped 500 transfer to dragon fruit cultivation.
These days, Mahesh has advanced a excellent buyer base within the within sight Sangli and Kolhapur markets the place he manages to promote his seasonal produce of a minimum of 200 tonnes, incomes an source of revenue of Rs 2 crores from his 20-acre dragon fruit farm.
This June, he additionally goals to release his processing unit to promote Price-Added Merchandise (VAP) together with dragon fruit juice, squash, jam, and goodies. “With our group of 500 farmers, I purpose to go into into the export trade with our prime quality produce together with the VAPs within the processing trade,” he provides.
For his remarkable paintings within the box of agriculture, Mahesh used to be bestowed with a number of awards together with the celebrated Nationwide Cutting edge Agri Adolescence Award 2021 through the Krishibhushan Maharashtra FPO Startup Federation.
He used to be additionally given the Krishak Samman Award through the Maharana Pratap College of Agriculture and Era, and the Krishithon Cutting edge Younger Farmer award for leading edge fruit farming and multi-fruit crop development through Krishithon – India’s premier agriculture industry honest in Nashik.
Having a look again at his luck, he stocks, “These days’s technology appears at agriculture as a loss-making sector. With my instance, I wish to show off that agriculture may also be became a excellent trade alternative.”
“We want the more youthful technology in farming in order that they are able to flip agriculture successful through adopting new applied sciences over typical strategies on account of their wit and abilities. It used to be on account of my training that I used social media and visited many nations like Thailand, Vietnam, and Israel to discover ways to care for the demanding situations in farming and development. This don’t have been anticipated from the older generations,” he provides.
Edited through Padmashree Pande. All footage: Mahesh Asabe.