Group of Lucknow farmers go indigo way, hope to fetch higher prices

Two years ago herbal dye manufacturer Yawer Ali Shah started cultivating indigo on the outskirts of Lucknow to improve his profit margins as transporting it from farms in Tamil Nadu proved costly.

Encouraged by him, a group of farmers at Sanda village in the area has taken up its cultivation and hoping to get substantially higher prices than they earned through the cultivation of peppermint, a popular cash crop in the region.

Indigo, scientifically called indigofera tinctoria and "neel" in local parlance, can be harvested twice a year. According to experts, its cultivation also improves the soil quality. "We have planted Indigo on one and a half hectares. The plant will be harvested soon and we expect to fetch a good price for the produce," says Ram Khilawan at Sanda village.

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Explaining the reason behind opting for indigo cultivation, Mohammad Wasif says the production cost of peppermint exceeded returns. "This has made it very difficult to continue with it and we were looking to cultivate another crop that could fetch us some money," he says.

Shah, who's firm provided seeds to the farmers, has promised to purchase all of their harvest. "Going by the current price of natural indigo, farmers will earn 30 per cent more money as compared to what they earned from peppermint," Shah says pointing to rising demand for natural dye in recent years.

"We are one of the leading exporters of natural indigo dye in the world. The demand for the dye has gone up substantially following the push for it in the apparel industry," Shah adds.

Talking about the potential of natural indigo dye, Shah says going by the demand, harvest over one lakh hectares can easily be accommodated in the global market.

Other farmers are also eagerly waiting for results to make up their mind for indigo cultivation. Santosh Singh says, "This year, some of the farmers in our village have cultivated indigo. If they get good returns, we will cultivate the crop from next year.”

According to agricultural experts, once grown indigo crop can be harvested twice a year by farmers. "Indigo requires little to no fertilisers and is not eaten by stray cattle. This reduces any possibility of harvest loss. If indigo produced by the farmers in the area is bought at good rates, the crop will be beneficial for them as compared to any other traditional cash crop," says Dharmendra Kumar Gupta of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

He says Indigo roots have nodules containing nitrogen fixing bacteria, which improves the fertility of the soil. "Farmers can capitalise this aspect of Indigo by cultivating it with traditional crops in their farms," adds Gupta.

The official says other benefit of indigo cultivation is that farmers can sell it directly to buyers. "In peppermint cultivation, farmers harvest the plant shoot and take it to a refinery to extract oil. The extracted oil is then sold to traders," he says.

Farmers cut the entire plant a few centimetres above the root and sell it to indigo producers. The entire shoot is used to extract the dye which is concentrated and dried before sale.