Organic Fruits and Mushroom Spawns

Dear Reader,

Government jobs are highly valued in India. They bring stability, social prestige and post-retirement benefits. Not surprisingly, at least two-thirds of students prepare for government job examinations despite the intense competition for a handful of vacancies.

Kapil Yadav participated in this race from 2014 until 2020 without any success. The lockdown prompted him to experiment with organic guava farming on just about 0.3 acres in his native Kotputli, Rajasthan. The results were good, and Kapil forgot about a government job, he told me. 

Today, he grows organic guavas, sweet lime, and oranges and runs a fruit nursery business. Farmers from across India visit his nursery to buy the saplings. Kapil earns a cool Rs35 lakh annually from three acres and expects the number to cross Rs50 lakh this year. 

Unlike Kapil, Jatindra Bawra did not spend years trying to get a government job. Soon after his MSc in Sustainable Development, he joined his brother’s vegetable farm in Sundargarh, Odisha, as an apprentice. Five years later, he started on his own and also took training in mushroom farming, writes my colleague Malay.

Jatindra invested Rs2,000 in putting up bags of oyster and paddy straw mushrooms and the rest is history. His unit now prepares 1,000 bottles of mushroom spawns (seeds) daily, bought by growers in Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. He clocked Rs35 lakh in revenues last fiscal and is targeting Rs60 lakh turnover in the next two years.

My colleague Aruna wrote about an interesting initiative by Dr Binish Desai, who has 147 inventions and 19 patents to his credit. He has set up ReArtham, a Gujarat-based startup turning the invasive weed Lantana Camara into a wood composite. Local tribal women convert Lantana wood, leaves, and stems into Eco-wood, which is used for making furniture, flooring, and décor products.

The initiative empowers women, saves native biodiversity and promotes sustainable living. This is the power of a thoughtful enterprise!

Our Sunday story is about Panruti, the jackfruit capital of India. Panruti jackfruit also received the GI tag last week. Why? Read on!

Happy Reading!

Warmly,
Rashmi