Taking a ‘sweet revenge'

Success of farm club’s initiative to grow watermelons

Rich harvest:Farmers harvesting watermelons from Parakulam Nilam, near Kakkodi, on Monday.

Kozhikode: It is a harvest of sweet revenge for the members of the Karshaka Mithra Farmers’ Club at Parakkulam Nilam, near Kakkodi, when they heap up the ripe watermelon in tonnes from the five-acre filed they cultivated together for the second time this year. Their “overwhelming success” in watermelon farming at a seemingly unbecoming area is a “fitting reply” to those who discouraged and mocked them when they ventured out with the plan last year.

With the patronage of NABARD and South Malabar Gramin Bank, the collective of farmers embarked on farming watermelon at a good stretch of land leased out for the purpose to have come out with flying colours.

There are more than 150 members in the club. And most of them participated in the initiative. The club found the basic capital for the venture by floating shares and through securing a Rs.1.5-lakh loan from a bank. They sought advice from the expert bodies including the Kerala Agricultural University and local agricultural offices for the purpose and managed to bring the “highbred” seeds from other States. They got good support such as the irrigation facilities arranged by the Chellannur block panchayat.

“And to boot, we were resorting to precision farming with advices from experts in the filed,” said Abraham Mathew, president of the club. “We have harvested only less than one-fourth of our total area today,” said Mr. Mathew adding that the yield was very good and came around three tonnes from less than one acre of filed.

He said the market rate of watermelon was “very high” (Rs.12 a kg) as it was the end of the season. “The quality also is very high with dense red colour inside and huge size for single pieces (around 12 kg),” said K.K. Ayyappan, farmer and executive committee member of the club.

Mr. Ayyappan said they had to face lot of criticism and ridicules from different quarters for selecting a crop no one had tried earlier in their part of the State.

Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/11/stories/2010051156030300.htm

Courtesy
The Hindu