MARGAO/ CANACONA: Strawberry cultivation bore fruit for Verlem, so now the hill-top hamlet in the picturesque Netravali is vying to take a healthy bite of apple cultivation. Prodded by the state agriculture department, one of the three self-help groups (SHGs) engaged in strawberry cultivation in Verlem has ventured into apple farming.
“It’s being done on an experimental basis,” said Milan Gaonkar, zonal agriculture officer (ZAO), Sanguem. “The villagers experimented with strawberry farming and it proved to be a success story. The area is hilly and the climate is cool. The conditions are conducive to apple farming.”
Gaonkar added, “So we have taken up this experiment on a small piece of land alongside strawberry fields.”
Women farmers are upbeat about the experiment and are hopeful of reaping a decent apple harvest.
“We thought of adopting a new crop this season to get an idea about whether any winter crop other than strawberry can sustain in this environment,” said Dhanya Velip of Bhumika SHG. “The agriculture office of Sanguem provided us with 19 grafts of apples in May 2022. The grafts have now grown almost 1.5m high.”
Velip added, “I am hopeful that the trees will grow well and yield fruit. We can think of growing apples along with strawberries if this experiment succeeds.”
Meanwhile, strawberry fields at Verlem have already emerged as a tourist destination, with the village drawing heavy footfalls of visitors. Altogether, 35 families from three SHGs are involved in strawberry farming in the village.
“All of the berries which we harvest in the morning get sold at the farm within a few hours,” said Alka Gaonkar, another member of Bhumika SHG. “We don’t really have to go to the market to sell. People like to taste strawberries plucked fresh from the farm.” She added, “Often, during weekends when we have a large number of tourists, we are unable to meet the surge in demand.”
In addition to strawberries, the farmers have grown cauliflower, potatoes, wild gooseberries, watermelon, tomatoes, as well as leafy vegetables such as red amaranthus (tambdi bhaji) in their farmlands. The strawberry season that begins in December lasts until March. A visitor is charged a small fee to visit the strawberry farms, which adds to the income of the farmers.
Vijay Saxena, project director, Atal Gram Development Agency, derives a sense of fulfillment from the strawberry success story. “If the entire day’s harvest gets sold at the farm itself, it is indeed an achievement,” Saxena said. “The government has been talking about developing hinterland tourism. And this is one agro-enterprise that has good tourism potential, signs of which are already visible.”
Saxena added, “The tourist inflow in Verlem has increased since the strawberry cultivation began, and with farmers hiking the entry fee to the farms, they are getting additional income.” He went on to say, “It’s good for our farmers, almost all of whom belong to the scheduled tribes.”
In April 2016, the government constituted the Atal Gram Development Agency tasked with monitoring the projects undertaken in Netravali under the Atal Adarsh Gram Vikas Yojana. Netravali was selected by the state government in 2013 for developing it into a model self-sufficient village on the cooperative model, with the focus on community participation under the central government scheme.
Atal Gram Development Agency provided the necessary hand-holding to the strawberry cultivators. Saxena said that the farmers have now become technically sound. “However, we do arrange virtual conferences for the farmers with experts from Mahabaleshwar or Indian Council for Agriculture Research (I-CAR) periodically,” he said. “We intervene whenever a problem is reported to us.”
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