Success Stories
S. Gurpreet Singh Shergill Vill.- Majhal khurd
S. Gurpreet Singh Shergill, is a young farmer aged 38 years. A diploma holder in mechanical engineering, he chose farming over job. His family land holding is 14.5 hectares. After obtaining trainings from KVK, Patiala, he started cultivation with conventional paddy-wheat farming. With a scientific bent of mind he was not satisfied with the fixed earnings of the system. After acquiring thorough knowledge by meeting farmers, scientist and visiting places he ventured into floriculture. Today he cultivates: Gladiolus, Rose, Marigold, Guljafri, and is also involved in Seed production of paddy & wheat, Vermiculture and Fisheries. Gladiolus is a rare crop for cultivation among farmers of the area. Therefore no technology for its mechanized cultivation has been developed. In gladiolus two major time and labour consuming practices are bulb digging and grading of the same for sale as seed. He has innovated various farm machinery viz: Gladiolus digger: He custom designed a gladiolus bulb digger which is tractor mounted and easy to operate. Gladiolus Grader: He sells the surplus bulbs as seed. Manual grading used to take weeks. He developed a grader which in single operation grades bulbs in four different sizes with 0% injury to bulbs. The grading capacity is 7 to 8 quintals per hour and cost around Rs. 30,000/-, he has established a rose water manufacturing unit. Any surplus rose which is not sold is used for producing rose water. Further he also has a Vermin compost Unit established as per the guidelines of NHM. Apart from using it on his own fields its being sold in the market in different sized bags as per market demand. Both rose water and compost are sold under the trade name Balson. He is winner of the prestigious state level award: Chief Minister Award in Horticulture on the occasion of State Level Kisan mela during March, 2011.
S. Harbans Singh, Vill. Birarwal
After taking training in hybrid seed production from KVK, Patiala, Harbans Singh, Vill Birarwal, started hybrid seed and nursery production of chilli. He is involved in this field for past 15 years and today he himself is an institution to learn from, in hybrid seed production of chillies. He has received Chief Minister Award in Horticulture from PAU, Ludhiana as well as National Level Award from IVRC, Varanasi, for his acumen in hybrid seed production which is requires considerable skill, along with many other facilitations at state and national level. He has further diversified in seed production of potato and paddy as well. Presently, his nursery market is spread up to Rajasthan, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh, and he supplies chilli nursery for almost 700 acres per year.
S. Meharban Singh, Vill. Saholi
Meharban Singh, winner of Ujagar Singh Dhaliwal Award and Chief Minister Award from PAU, Ludhiana, is actively involved in protected cultivation of vegetable. He puts regular efforts to improve cultivation practices and spraying composition. During his latest trip to London, he has visited the vegetable markets over there in order to explore the export market in vegetables. He shifted from cereal-cereal monoculture to Vegetable cultivation thereby increasing water productivity for per unit water consumed both in terms of yield and returns. Owing to availability of large number of options in vegetables, he can rotate the field and crop as per requirement so as the cultivation is less taxing (i.e. in terms of amount of nutrient derived from soil and soil health) to the soil. He has all his land holding under drip and sprinkler system (drip and sprinkler as per crop). The fertilizers are also applied through drip system. Along with drip system, he also use mulching for the crops, this further reduces water loss and helps to control weeds as well. A well is also available at his farms to recharge the excess water available from the surface runoff or drainage channels. He has turned his gross returns almost by three times over the conventional by adopting the vegetable based diversified farming.