Knowledge Technology and Hard Work Leads to Success
There are only 15 – 20 households around the Jolapani village of Sharmali VDC in Baitadi district where Padam Singh Saud (53) is living along with his 8 family members. Almost all household in his village depends on traditional agricultural farming practices for their livelihood except some families whose one of the active family member goes to neighboring country India for labor work as Padam’s Son.
He was also previously working as labor in India. The major source of income for Padam’s family was labor work of his son before he engaged in farmers group formed by PAHAL team. He cultivated some cereal crops traditionally which was sufficient for less than six month for his family support before. He owns around 5 ropani of land which was mostly occupied by cereal (Maize, Wheat etc.), with some potato and spices but now he uses around 2 ropani of his land for the production of green vegetables.
After the implementation of PAHAL program in his VDC, he engaged in Gharbari Krishak Samuha as Chairperson (PAHAL ID 100779) and was selected as farmer to demonstrate plastic house with MIT by his group members. He also received tomato seed (var. Sirjana) and established nursery with the help of PAHAL technical staff. He was also made well acquainted about planting of tomato by maintaining spacing using MIT, training and pruning and staking. All these technologies and methods were completely new to him. He finally realized that this technology produces more in less water supplement and in off season and seed requirement is also less. The quality of product obtained was better than conventional method and also obtained tomato for longer duration form single planting.
He produced around 200kg of tomato and around from his plastic house from Kartik to now. He earned more than Rs 10,000 by selling tomato , those remaining after family consumption in his own village and also in nearby market (Sharmali).He also planted some bitter gourd after getting inspired by our technician and produced aroung 100 kg of it. Now the tomato in plastic house is terminated and is producing the seedling of cucumber for further cultivation. He also planted Zucchini and Cabbage in open land by his own investment after he took Lead farmer Training from DADO.
“I have found lead farmers training form DADO which helped me for planting a Zucchini & Cabbage in open field but I have no idea for professional cultivation in agriculture as well as new technology, thank you PAHAL program for giving me a better opportunity”, he also said that “I have a problem of irrigation, if support will be found from PAHAL for water pond, I assure that I will be done it with my maximum effort”.
He has also faced some problems like unavailability of bamboo for plastic house construction, lack of collection centre and no fixed market price etc. Besides these problems, he is further planning to construct new plastic tunnel and he is also interested in fruit cultivation (Mango, Pineapple and Papaya).