Small car brings big profit for Gujarat farmers

The area is popularly known for growing cotton, but now farmers are preferring to grow other crops also.

Take the example of Khoraj village near Tata Motors’ Nano plant. Farmers here have already shifted from cotton to paddy, due to easy availability of water. The passage of the Narmada canal from near the Nano plant and good rain has convinced the farmers to take up this kind of shift.

In Khoraj village almost 90 per cent of sowing has been shifted to paddy in the past couple of months and with good rain, farmers are expecting good profit from paddy instead of cotton. “Earlier we went for Bt cotton but it needs a lot of pesticide and water. This only hardened the soil, so farmers in this village from the past experience have decided to first shift from Bt cotton to Kalyan cotton and now to paddy and some other crops,” said one of the farmers Raghu Jadhav.

Over 90 per cent of the 5,000 bigah under cultivation land is now been used for paddy cultivation.

Another farmer Gambhir Jadhav, who has 200 bigah of land at Khoraj said: “Rain has been good but very uncertain and last longer which spoils the standing cotton crop, so now we mainly sow paddy and castor and the Narmada canal has just added to the advantage.”

With many disadvantages on cultivating cotton, farmers are now shifting toward paddy, castor and jowar.

Another farmer Hitesh Chavda, who has around 100 bigah of agricultural land, said between 2008 and 2010 over 50 per cent of his crop failed due to unseasonal rain and water scarcity, which does not seem to be a difficulty any more.