Farmers of the district are constantly coming forward to adopt crop diversification instead of traditional crops. In place of wheat, gram, paddy and pigeon pea crops, farmers are now cultivating high value crops and medicinal crops and getting better production and reaping good income. Farmer Sheikh Rustam from village Natwara, Yashpal Lodhi from village Sunachar and Vinay Badal from village Belkheda under Shahpura block have adopted the high value crop to earn sound income. Agriculture officers including Deputy Director Agriculture Dr. S.K. Nigam, Sub-Divisional Agriculture Officer Patan Dr. Indira Tripathi, Agriculture Extension Officer Sushma Kulesh and Gautam Yadav, inspected the cultivation of high value crops being done by these farmers.

 

Deputy Director Dr. Nigam said that farmer Sheikh Rustam has presented a unique example of crop diversification. On one hand, he has grown sweet corn, moong and urad, on the other, he is earning good profits by cultivating intercrops like bottle gourd and coriander. Farmer Yashpal Lodhi has also adopted high value crops in place of traditional crops in his field. Yashpal had planted BNR-212, a grafted variety of brinjal, in 9 acres of land in June last year. He had obtained a yield of 20 kg of brinjal from each plant. Currently, Yashpal has pruned the brinjal plants and now the crops have started flowering in large numbers again. According to Deputy Director Dr.

 

Nigam, farmer Vinay Badal has started vegetable and fruit farming since last year. Vinay has planted capsicum in two and a half acres of land, tomato and green chilli in five acres each and watermelon and muskmelon in three acres each. Farmer Vinay Badal told that initially he had to spent a lot to arrange drip, wire and bamboo etc. in the his fields, but there is also a benefit in getting good rates of chilli and melon in the market. Vinay told that in the coming year he will plant capsicum and chilli in larger area. He also suggested farmers to start high value crops by growing chilli in a limited area.