Siddipet: With an objective to making farming more profitable besides providing healthy and nutritious food to the people, a postgraduate in Chemistry has started cultivating new varieties of paddy in his farm at Shankarayakunta village of Chinnakodur Mandal of Siddipet district. Cultivating black rice, young farmer Maku Mahesh (32) has increased his profits by four-fold during the Vanakalam Crop season.
Introducing another variety of paddy during Yasangi, Mahesh had cultivated black rice and red rice (Navaras) in 30 guntas each. While the regular rice is being sold at Rs 50 per kg in the market, the Black Rice is being sold at Rs 250 a kg.
Speaking to Telangana Today, Mahesh said that they would get 24 to 28 quintals of regular paddy on each acre. Though they would get between 12 and 15 quintals of black and red Rice yield on an acre, Mahesh said that they will get a minimum of Rs 1.90 lakh income. Since Mahesh has sold his paddy to farmers for seeds, he had got more profits last time. Saying that they can earn more profits if they had better marketing facilities, the Post Graduate in Chemistry has said that the Black Rice is being sold at Rs 300 to 600 a kg online.
Since his father is a farmer, Mahesh used to engage in various agricultural activities from childhood. Even though he had completed MSc in Organic Chemistry and BEd, Mahesh had a passion towards innovative farming. After joining as a faculty at a private engineering college in Siddipet in 2017 located some 16 km away from his farm, Mahesh started pursuing his passion for agriculture.
During the last Vanakalam season in 2020, when the entire world was struggling to cope up with Covid-19 induced lockdown, Mahesh cultivated black rice in 30 Guntas of paddy field. He had decided to cultivate black and red rice each in 30 guntas of field during the current Yasangi, which is ready to harvest now. Since Mahesh is cultivating these paddy varieties following the organic practices, he had considerably reduced his investment besides making the paddy healthy.
The black rice is not only nutritious but also recommended for sugar patients, besides acting as a preventive for cancer, while the red rice is recommended for arthritis and diabetic patients, and works well for losing weight too. As Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao and Finance Minister T Harish Rao were batting for diversity in farming, Mahesh is showing the way to the farmers by cultivating a new variety of crops and enhancing his profits. Mahesh, who owns four acre farm land, is now planning to extend the area under cultivation besides trying some new varieties during the upcoming Vanakalam season. In an attempt to encourage other farmers, he had also opened a YouTube channel and is active on social networking sites to reach out to them.
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