Coco Peat Farming Quadruples Farmer’s Income

This is a story about a farmer named Nand Lal Dangi from Rajasthan. Four years back, Nand Lal was growing about 20 tonnes of cucumber a year on his 2-acre land at Maharaj Ki Khedi, a remote village in south Rajasthan. Soon he resorted to soil-less coco peat farming technique. The new farming technique quadrupled his farm output to 80 tonnes and zoomed annual income.

There was a time when it was difficult for the farmer to recover even labour costs due to crop damage and low produce. Arid and hot climate also added to his woes and the common problem of nematode.Nemetodes are worm like pests that feed on the root of the plants. He faced a lot of problem; still he was not able to combat the problem of nematode. He invested nearly 10 lakh and still his crop was damaged due to various reasons from pests to unfavourable weather conditions.

Since the past few years, farmers and agriculturalists have started recognising the benefits of coco peat as a growing medium. Recently, in the Udumalpet district of Tamil Nadu, many crops were grown using coco peat.Typically, Udumalpet is rain starved. A person visiting the place for the first time wouldn’t imagine rows of vegetables growing. However, Mr. R.K Raghunandan of Green Terra has made the impossible possible. Mr. Raghunandan promotes coco peat as an alternative growing medium to soil. It is he who pioneered the use of coco peat in the country and in 1991; he exported it to UK and Australia as well. Coco peat is made using coco peat machines.

Finally, in 2013, he discovered Asian Agro company growing vegetables in cocopeats. Coco peat farming is a soil-less way of farming used to grow crops in coconut husk. Dangi had never heard of this concept. He gave up his traditional way of farming in open fields and switched to coco peat farming. Besides, he moved to polyhouse for plantation of crops and gave up the traditional way of irrigating the fields through tubewells. He now uses drip irrigation methods. Using coco peat farming, nematodes fail to enter the bag.

He cultivates his land twice a year. It costs him about Rs. 6 lakhs a year to produce 80 tonnes of cucumber every year. In return, he gets 18 lakhs. Even the fruiting period has gone up; during summers the fruiting period begins between 35-40 and in winters 45-50.

Mr.Rajarathinam, Proprietor of Essar Engineers, Coimbatore. We are engaged in manufacturing, exporting, supplying and trading a wide range of coconut husk processing machines, coconut shell processing machines, coconut food processing machines, etc.