Chilli crop, ‘hot’ choice of Rampur farmers

Farmers belonging to Rampur, a tiny village in Kotapalli mandal are making waves in raising this traditional chilli crop

Mancherial: A vast array of scenic lush green farm fields on either side of the Nizamabad-Jagdalpur national highway 16 greet motorists once they enter Kotapalli mandal.

Neither staple paddy, nor cotton crops are raised in these fields. But, it is chilli crop which draw attention of the motorists and commoners.

---

Farmers belonging to Rampur, a tiny village in Kotapalli mandal are making waves in raising this traditional chilli crop, showing the way to others since many decades.

They are growing the commercial crop in nearly 500 acres as against the total area of the cultivation in the district which is around 1,200 acres, indicating their domination in cultivating the crop.

“Farmers of this region are familiar with the intricacies of growing the crop. They have been traditionally raising cash crops for quite a long time. In particular, farmers from Rampur village are known for raising chilli crop. Similarly, the lands are fertile as they are situated in the basin of Godavari and Pranahita river,” District Horticulture Officer K Sahaja says.

Pilli Chandrashekhar, a farmer from Rampur, opined that the crop was risky and required comparatively higher investments. Growers can earn somewhere between Rs 1 lakh to 2 lakh depending on the demand for produce in the market. I have been growing the crop for 20 years by learning skills from my parents, he said.

The growers said that they are spending around Rs 1.50 lakh per acre to buy pesticides, fertilizer and to engage farm laborers and are recording a yield of somewhere between 20 and 30 quintals of chilli per acre. They maintain that they can earn profits only if the price was over Rs 10,000 per quintal and marketing opportunities are created in Chennur.

Currently, the farmers are forced to sell the produce in Enumamula agriculture market of Warangal district and Napgur of Maharashtra incurring huge expenditure for transportation.

They wanted marketing opportunities to sell the product as Chennur has good road connectivity with the national highway passing through it. Other farmers may enter into growing the crop, a farmer maintained.

Farmers from Kollur, and Devulawada villages in Kotapalli mandal, a few villages of Chennur mandal Padthanpalli village in Hajipur mandal, Chitagudem and Rampur villages of Jannaram mandal are cultivating the crop.