Making money by selling paddy straw
Balkrishan, a 50-year-old farmer from Sangrur, attended the Kisan Mela at the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in 2006. He attended a lecture on microorganisms in the soil and how they were destroyed by paddy straw burning. He stuck to it and never burned straw again.
Balkrishan, a 50-year-old farmer from Sangrur, attended the Kisan Mela at the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in 2006. He attended a lecture on microorganisms in the soil and how they were destroyed by paddy straw burning. He stuck to it and never burned straw again.
“I remember a professor saying that the microorganisms in the soil work to make it fertile by breaking down the crop residue. These microorganisms die when with farm fires. And ever since I have kept this in mind. This is perhaps a reason behind the high yield,” he said.
Balkrishan from Bhulan village in Sangrur district is one the five progressive farmers honoured by the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) at the Kisan Mela. He practices farming on 52 acres of land. He owns 22 acres, and the rest is on lease. He claims that he earns over ₹1lakh from an acre.
Instead of burning the straw he sells it to businessmen who make fodder with straw. Last year he claimed to sell straw for ₹6,000 per acre.
Even with an example like him many of the farmers in villages still chose to burn stubble. The reason he said was that it took time to uproot the crop and have it picked up the traders. Many farmers thought that the time it took would make them late for sowing wheat.
Here he credits the PAU again. “Experts from the PAU have assured us that the best time to sow wheat is the second week of November. So, when paddy is harvested in October, I don’t have any reason to panic and go for an option that can get the field free as soon as possible. I let the labourers harvest the crop and traders pick the residue straw.”
While the main kharif and rabi crops are paddy and wheat, he grows mustard, bajra, jawar, moong, vegetables, and fruits, using the guidance of the university’s experts every step of the way.
He sows canola mustard developed by PAU on two to four acres of land. Instead of selling raw mustard that goes for around ₹5,000 per quintal, he follows PAU’s advice to produce oil and sell it for around ₹80,000. Similarly, instead of growing onion, he produces onion seeds which earn him a quarter lakh through half an acre and uses the sides of the beds to grow garlic. “I earned around ₹20,000 from garlic which covered the input cost for onions, making all the earning into net profit.
Similarly, using the advice from experts at the Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU) he doesn’t sell the milk from his dairy farm that has around 18 cattle, but produces ghee. “A litre of milk will only fetch me ₹50, but I can make 100 gm ghee from that milk, which will sell for ₹120.”