ROURKELA: Traditionally, agriculture has been associated with hard labour on farms with limited returns. However, 32-year-old Hirod Patel of Sundargarh has been able to change this perception. The young farmer of Ratanpur in the Tangarpali block of Sundargarh district has adopted an integrated farming system (IFS) under which he does horticulture, paddy farming and pisciculture in farm ponds. What makes his farm unique is that he also uses the pond space to grow climbing vegetable plants.
Patel hails from an agrarian family. After trying his hand at many vocations, he returned to help his father Shiva Shankar in farming. Patel’s farm comprises 14 acres of land which includes two acres that he has taken on lease. Ten acres of this land are being used for horticulture, pisciculture, poultry and dairy farming besides floriculture. Paddy is grown over three acres during the kharif season.
Although his low-lying agricultural land is most suitable for labour-intensive paddy crops, the returns were not encouraging. Things started to look up after he began shifting to other crops and decided to adopt the integrated farming system. In 2019, he dug up three ponds with the help of the soil conservation and watershed development wing of the Agriculture Department.
“A low-lying patch on my land was unusable due to accumulation of rainwater from other areas. A year back, the district administration using the labour component under MGNREGS created a rectangular pond spread over 10 decimal of land,” said the farmer who has completed his ITI.
To utilise the area efficiently, he decided to opt for bund cultivation while using the pond for pisciculture. Accordingly, six months back, he planted 120 saplings of bottle gourd on the bunds (retaining walls along the boundary of pond) and installed trellis made of GI wires atop the pond for the vines to climb at the cost of Rs 70,000. As bunds provide more time for water to infiltrate into the soil and help conserve soil moisture, he did not have to worry about watering the plants. When the fruits from the vines grew, they hung from below the net.
Patel harvested the first batch of 1,500 bottle gourds using a makeshift raft recently and sold them for Rs 35,000. The second batch of produce will be ready for harvest in a few days. He uses the two other ponds for pisciculture. The fish yield from ponds fetch him Rs 80,000 annually. His farm also has 350 coconut trees, numerous banana, berry, guava, mango and other trees that will bear fruits soon. He employs four farm labourers and earns Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh annually, which he believes can be further increased.
Deputy Director of Horticulture Sukanta Nayak said the pattern of growing different horticulture crops on bunds of farm ponds is common but the method of sowing climber vegetable plants on the pond bunds is unique. “I used to grow climber plants and rest the vines on a machan earlier. When the pond was readied by the Agriculture Department, I thought of using the space efficiently. So in July this year, I planted 120 bottle gourd plants on two sides of the farm bunds each measuring 200 ft,” Patel said.He plans to replicate the model in other ponds and experiment with other vine crops too.