Vegetables Cultivation in Tribal Areas in Vadodara

Posted by : GSWMA Wednesday 8 January 2014

Green Houses are friendly for plant growth as they have great control over the environment favorable for plant growth. Green Houses are effective in growing off-season vegetables, flowers, fruits, planting material acclimatization, plant breeding and transplants. It is more effective in certain crops like Tomatoes, Chilli and Brinjals etc. The controlled environment also helps to extend the cropping season for most of the crops thereby it increases the farmers income.

“Main objective of watershed project is to increase the income of the stake holder but it is also equally important to transfer the best known practices to the village level.”

Why Green house in watershed project?

As per the current guidelines, integration is on the forefront as mentioned above, thus Agriculture productivity and crop diversity has been taken up seriously to have the following effect:

1. Low Input cost.
           a. Less water and labour requirement.
           b. Higher yield compare to traditional cultivation.
           c. Trend towards pesticide-free produce in the market.
2. Increase in Income
           a. Market Demand for exotic vegetables, flowers.
3. Business
           a. Growing agricultural market segment.

DWDU Vadodara Intervention:

Bandi Village of Pavi jetpur taluka is covered under IWMP-1 project village of Vadodara district. Indigenous cropping pattern was in practice in the village and thus there was an immense demand for the exotic vegetables in the local market. DWDU-Vadodara under its livelihood intervention identified a User Group in the Bandi Village who mostly grew maize as their crop. As a part of their intervention DWDU-Vadodara presented a demonstration on the potential of net house in their village and the user group readily accepted the concept. The net-house (size is 100 sq.m.) constructed in survey no-47/1 & the name of User Group chairman is Rathwa Kishanbhai Salubhai. They used the net house for growing vegetable seedlings of Tomato (Aviskar, Abhinav), Brinjal (Neelam) and Chilli (Garima). Total cost for the installation of the net house is Rs. 60,000/- which was covered under the Livelihood component of the project. The selling of the seedlings is done in the nearby villages within a range of 10-15 km radius.


Fig.1 : Selling of Seedlings	Fig.2 : Green House

Cultivation Pattern of the UG:
No. of Beds: 10
Bed Size: 1mtr.
Vegetables: Tomato (var.Aviskar F1 hybrid & Abhinav F1 hybrid), Chilli (var.Garima & Sitara hybrid hot peeper), Brinjal (Chhaya F1 hybrid & MEBH 39)

Economics of Vegetable Production:

Particulars	Chilli	Tomato	Brinjal	Total
Costing
Seed required (no. of Packets)	2	8	1	11
Cost Per Packet (in Rs.)	400	800	200	1400
Total Cost [A]	800	6400	200	7400
Seedlings Production
Total Production	3500	12000	1500	17000
(-) Self consumption	1000	5000	400	6400
Seedlings for Sale	2500	7000	1100	10600
Price per seedlings (in Rs.)	1.4	2.8	1.3	-
Total Earnings (in Rs.) [B]	3500	20000	1500	25000
Profit [B-A]	2700	13600	1300	17600
CB Ratio	2.38

Note: As per the above data through net-house within only 1.5 month the UG earned a profit of Rs.17, 600/-, which is a great success in current modern agriculture business.

Impacts of the Interventions:

Increase in Profit potential: Total crop yield period of one season in net house is 45-50 days. The profit of UG increased twice in the first season.

Market profitability: Marketing is a big problem in tribal areas. But due to high demand of seedling, beneficiaries came to the UG for procuring seedlings. Thus, marketing was not a big issue in this case.

High Quality products: Net House cultivation has less disease attack and requires less fertilization to the crops, thus quality products are produced by the UG.

Availability of off seasons vegetables: Through net house climatic conditioned can be controlled easily and water use efficiency also increased. So off season vegetables can be grown through this and can get more benefits.