In 2014, 61% of farmers, especially youth, surveyed by academic institution Lokniti, said they would like to quit if they had a choice. The National Sample Survey’s 59th round on the Situation Assessment Survey of Farmers, 2003, had revealed that only 60% of Indian farmer households wanted to remain in agriculture. But the profession need not be a dead-end, as these examples show.
In the lakes and lagoons of Majuli, like in the rest of Assam, water hyacinth, an invasive aquatic weed (eichhornia crassipes), is considered by locals as a big nuisance. Rowing boats through them becomes difficult. Thickets of hyacinth, which spread aggressively, usually grow across ponds and fisheries. They also don’t let sunlight in, which hampers fishing.
In this battered island, hyacinths are now being hailed as a saviour, thanks to one man’s efforts to turn this weed into a source of wealth and rural income. About 135 women from below-poverty-line households now farm hyacinths in their neighbourhood lakes and lagoons to use their stems as a virtually cost-free raw material.
Their products: fruit baskets, flower vases, mats, office stationery, hats and even small furniture.
Kabya Jyoti Bora, a 47-year-old veterinarian, started farming hyacinths in 2013, after training under the Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres scheme from the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals in Guwahati in 2010.
Reade more of this and a few more success stories in this report published in Hindustan Times....
