At a time when dragon fruit was not common in Maharashtra, Mahesh Asabe arrange a worthwhile enterprise with dragon fruit cultivation. In the present day, he leads the best way by incomes Rs 10 lakh per 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 have been bearing the brunt of local weather change and unprecedented agricultural losses over the previous few a long time.

Curiously, Mahesh Asabe, an modern farmer from the dry Akola village of the district, has made agriculture a profit-making sector within the dry area. He has led the best way with dragon fruit cultivation and is now incomes Rs 10 lakh per acre.

“Historically, now we have been rising pomegranates, custard apples, and grapes. With local weather change, it has been troublesome to domesticate these crops,” Mahesh tells The Higher India.

“In the present day, we expertise unseasonal rains and hailstorms. Typically, we get rain throughout the harvesting interval of grapes. This washes away our 12 months’s value of laborious work. Moreover, there was an unprecedented enhance in the price of fertilisers through the years. It collectively made farming unprofitable,” provides the 27-year-old.

We sat down with the younger farmer to know how he reaped income after switching to dragon fruit cultivation.

A dicey experiment

Since his childhood, Mahesh dreamt of changing into a farmer. To form his goals into actuality, he went on to review agricultural engineering after which accomplished his grasp’s in meals processing and engineering from Udaipur, Rajasthan, in 2020.

It was throughout his commencement years that the engineer examine dragon fruit farming in {a magazine}. “Because it belongs to the cactus household, dragon fruit requires much less water and nutrient necessities. It has a life expectancy of 20-25 years and offers a number of harvests in a 12 months,” he explains. 

“It has a excessive benefit-to-cost ratio, can survive the excessive summer time warmth and could be cultivated in any form of harsh land,” he provides.

“I understood that it was the longer term crop of farming and we may earn handsomely with dragon fruits 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 fee of Rs 110 every and planted them on three acres of land.

With excessive hopes, he had invested the household earnings of as much as Rs 17 lakh to organize the farmland and plant the brand new crop that was nonetheless unknown to numerous farmers within the area.

What occurred subsequent devastated him.

Turning perils into alternatives

After a 12 months of planting the crop, Mahesh didn’t get even a single fruit out of the 9,000 saplings. “I used to be very younger and I used to be questioned about my resolution to domesticate dragon fruits. After we bought zero returns within the first 12 months, I began feeling depressed. We didn’t even have another enterprise to outlive on,” he shares.

Mahesh realised that the saplings he procured weren’t mature. “Ideally, the mom saplings ought to have been two years previous. We bought fooled with the produce. So, it took us two entire years to get returns from the crop,” he provides.

One of many different challenges earlier than Mahesh was a lack of know-how from prospects about this fruit, which closely impacted the crop’s demand. “No one knew what dragon fruit was. After we managed to get some produce, we took it to the market. Folks doubted that this is able to even make any sale,” he says.

To beat these challenges, Mahesh opened a YouTube channel to make farmers conscious in regards to the perks of dragon fruit farming which in flip led to an increase in consumption of the fruit. Over time, he gained good viewership and began attracting farmers to his area.

The progressive farmer has develop into 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 fruits. 

His farm has been visited by no less than 35,000 farmers from throughout Maharashtra. Of those, he has educated and helped 500 change to dragon fruit cultivation.

In the present day, Mahesh has developed a superb buyer base within the close by Sangli and Kolhapur markets the place he manages to promote his seasonal produce of no less than 200 tonnes, incomes an earnings of Rs 2 crores from his 20-acre dragon fruit farm.

This June, he additionally goals to launch his processing unit to promote Worth-Added Merchandise (VAP) together with dragon fruit juice, squash, jam, and candies. “With our staff of 500 farmers, I purpose to enter into the export enterprise with our high-quality produce together with the VAPs within the processing business,” he provides.

For his excellent work within the area of agriculture, Mahesh was bestowed with a number of awards together with the celebrated Nationwide Revolutionary Agri Youth Award 2021 by the Krishibhushan Maharashtra FPO Startup Federation. 

He was additionally given the Krishak Samman Award by the Maharana Pratap College of Agriculture and Expertise, and the Krishithon Revolutionary Younger Farmer award for modern fruit farming and multi-fruit crop sample by Krishithon – India’s premier agriculture commerce truthful in Nashik.

Trying again at his success, he shares, “In the present day’s technology seems to be at agriculture as a loss-making sector. With my instance, I need to showcase that agriculture could be become a superb enterprise alternative.”

“We want the youthful technology in farming in order that they’ll flip agriculture worthwhile by adopting new applied sciences over standard strategies due to their wit and abilities. It was due to my training that I used social media and visited many international locations like Thailand, Vietnam, and Israel to discover ways to cope with the challenges in farming and progress. This may not have been anticipated from the older generations,” he provides.

Edited by Padmashree Pande. All photographs: Mahesh Asabe.