Balasore: When most of the farmers are shying of the age-old occupation of agriculture due to labour crisis and various other constraints at present, a diploma holder in electrical engineering has been pleased to opt for farming instead of any other lucrative career.
Meet Sanjay Kumar Das of Kakabrehi village of Badhapal panchayat under Remuna block in the district here. He made up his mind to prop up his farmer father Kartik Das by adopting the modern techniques.
While he experimented on the biofloc means of fish farming and tasted the fruit of success, now he has been able to set an example for other fellow-farmers in a unique and queer way of growing vegetables sans soil called hydroponic farming.
In his media reactions, farm entrepreneur Sanjay informed, “I stumbled upon this technique (hydroponic farming) from my mobile phone 6-7 months back. After accessing this system from internet, I went curious and did a bit of research on it.”
He explained, “Our area is solely dependent on agriculture. As the vegetables can’t be grown in our paddy field during monsoon, I pondered over how to go in for it round the year. Gaining the information from internet and after making a contact over phone, I had been to Uttar Pradesh in January and underwent training in it (hydroponic farming). Now I have applied it two months ago.”
“When we grow on soil, the plants suffer from insect and pest attacks, bound down to sprinkle fertilizers and other chemicals. Also the timely plant management gives immense tension. By adopting the hydroponic farming, physical labour and costs get cut down considerably. It only needs some nutrition, coco peat, water, etc. While the vegetables grown on soil yield 3-4 kg of production, this new technique can yield 7-8 kg of production. Thus with a production capacity of 7-8 tons, a farmer can earn Rs 1 lakh and half,” the diploma engineer-turned farmer argued.
