THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: GB Prakash Kumar, a 44-year-old cable television and internet private service provider based at Mukkola in Thiruvananthapuram has never felt any qualms in taking a shovel and pickaxe to come up with pesticide free vegetable farming in 4.75 acres.
Over the last one decade and more, under the banner of Thiruvonam Organic Karshaka Sangham based at Pathirappally ward in the capital city, 20 members, including Prakash, have been coming up with bumper vegetable farming every year.
This time the self-help group has come up with tapioca, banana and 12 varieties of traditional vegetables in a 4.75 acre plot spread around four plots at Madathunada where the harvesting will be inaugurated by agriculture department and farmers welfare development director K Vasuki on Monday at 9 am.
Usually the organisers have a bumper harvest in time for the Onam festive season. But this year with the pandemic playing spoilsport, only the harvest of cucumber and spinach will be ready on Monday.
“We have also arranged a temporary outlet at the site where the public can buy the yields. The remaining lot of vegetables’ harvest will be taking place later. Tapioca and plantain cultivation are growing in 2.5 acres of private land which we have taken on lease”, Prakash told The New Indian Express. The vegetable farming revolution in the heart of the city had been kicked off under the aegis of Pathirapally BJP ward councillor V Krishnankutty Nair.
In fact, the members in the group take turns to tend to the vegetable farming for a few hours in the morning and evening as all of them are engaged in other regular jobs. It was under this Thiruvonam Organic Karshaka Sangham which saw the evolution of Karshika Karma Sena attached to Kudapanakunnu Krishi Bhavan which has since been emulated across the state.
“During 2010, we had harvested vegetable farming at a whopping five-acre area on lease. But later on we did not get that much land to go for vegetable farming. Fortunately, during this lockdown we still managed to enter into vegetable farming in four plots on lease where we are expecting a bumper harvest”, said Krishnankutty Nair, who is also the joint secretary of Kudapanakunnu Karshika Karma Sena.