MANGALURU:Krishnappa Naik effortlessly crosses a narrow wooden plank leading to his modest house in Ernody village near Ujire.The 46 year-old farmer showing his 20-foot long vermicompost pit, located next to the cowshed, reveals that he ekes a living by selling vermicompost. He flashes a shy smile, when his wife Girija declares with pride that their new 1,000 brick house covered with cement sheets was constructed by none other than her husband.
“I had no better work to do, so I made cement bricks and built my house to cut down the cost,’’ Naik informs with his eyes staring at nothing. Visually challenged, it is not Naik’s handicap but the quiet dignity and his independence that strikes any visitor.
Second among four children, Naik remembers being born normal. However his eyesight begun dimming and when he dropped from 8th Standard he had lost vision in both eyes. “Owing to poverty, I had no money to travel and undergo eye surgery in Mangaluru,’’ he says.
Refusing to blame his fate, Krishnappa learnt farming and until two years ago was cultivating paddy “I and my wife could no longer cultivate paddy due to shortage of water,’’ he says. To support his family, Naik took help of agriculture department and underwent training on vermicompost making techniques, two years ago. His wife also enrolled for a certificate course in vermicomposting, conducted by RUDSETI.
“Once in three months, we generate about six quintals of vermicompost,’’ he says. Naik faces no problem in marketing vermicompost as there are many buyers. “Naik’s vermicompost is of good quality,’’ says Vinayak Rao of Seva Bharati from Kanyadi village who had purchased vermi ompost from him on two occasions.
Impressed by his independence, Seva Bharati felicitated Naik during a meeting of farmers organised in Kanyady here recently. With his children growing up, Naik nurses the dream of expanding his vermicomposting unit by renovating the existing structure.