BHAWANIPATNA : A decade back when management professionals Jayanti Mahapatra and her husband Biren Sahu returned to the latter’s native Salebhata village in Kalahandi after taking a break from their careers in Bengaluru, economic disparity and migration were two things that first came to their notice.
Today, they are empowering people of not just Salebhata but 40 more villages nearby by providing livelihood through goatery under their start-up Manikstu Agro. The couple has opened a ‘goat bank’ and are promoting goat breeding through community farming. Manikstu Agro is currently associated with researchers in goat farming from NARI (National Agriculture Research Institute) at Phalton, Maharashtra.
“My husband and I were always passionate about farming and had visited a lot of high-tech farms, agro companies, dairies, poultries and other agri-ventures. We wondered something similar could not be done in Odisha. This is why we started Manikstu in Kalahandi,” she said.
Manikstu, meaning ‘blessing in the lap of Goddess Manikeshwari, was registered in 2015. Close to 1,000 farmers of the 40 villages are associated with Manikstu.
Jayanti explains the startup model. Farmers are provided two female goats, each about 1-year-old. Goats start giving birth in a year and may end up having three or more kids.
After the goats deliver, the farmers return 50 percent of the new goats to the goat bank. The goat bank has 40 vets and 27 among them are local women and youth. They provide services like regular checkup of goats, deworming, and vaccination to the goat farmers associated with Manikstu. Jayanti and Biren provide them market linkage. “We produce a diverse range of products like goat manure, milk, ghee which are sold in different parts of the country,” said Biren.
Currently, the Manikstu farm at Salebhata has 500 goats. “Our model is inspired by Dr Nimbkar of Satara district of Maharashtra, who had revolutionised goat breeding. We had started by collaborating with a small number of farmers here,” Biren added.
The start-up has been engaging farmers through contract farming. “There has been a paradigm shift in the earnings of these farmers. Women of these farmer families are also on their way towards self-sustenance by being engaged in the goatery,” said Jayanti who had won the StartUp Odisha Stri Shakti Award in 2022 .
The venture has started yielding results slowly but steadily. Farmers, who used to earlier migrate for work or become daily wagers after completing three months of cotton cultivation, are getting back to goat farming.