Manoj Sharma was recently interviewed by Vivek Rai on FTB. Manoj sharma, is a cotton and banana farmer based out of Madhya Pradesh, owner of the brand Sharma cotton farms. Manoj Sharma has been an active cotton farmer since 1980.
Manoj Sharma's father was in services and after his retirement, the work load was equally divided among the inheritors. Manoj Sharma was allocated the task of managing the farms. He had to return to his native village to start farming. He had never done farming before and he took up cotton farming since it was known to be profitable but had little knowledge about it. He faced some difficulties when he started with farming. He apprehensively started farming cotton on 1 bigha land, then 2 bigha land and learnt everything about cotton farming through practice and experience. (1 Bigha equals to 0.61 Acre)
He started his farming with JK varieties of cotton seeds and nowadays cultivates mostly with BT cotton seeds. BT cotton seeds are genetically modified seeds and pest resistant. He also uses Rasi seeds of the RCH-659 variety. He said the major difficulty he faces in cotton farming is in terms of irrigation.
The cotton farming starts on 25th may of every year and it takes 110 days for cotton flowers to be ready for harvesting. Cotton is a perennial plant and is grown annually. In rest of the year, he does crop rotation by growing bananas, papayas and other crops on the farm to keep the soil fertile. Preparation for cotton farming is done with cultivator, rotavator and tiller machines which keeps the soil ready for sowing the coton seeds 5x5. Cotton crops are ready by October to December. After taking the cotton away the cotton plants are cut down and residue left under the soil is also removed.
He sells his cotton to the merchants visiting the village, after the harvesting season every year, like the rest of the farmers in the village. These merchants then sell these crops in the Mandi. Manoj sharma told us that the Mandi is 25-30 km away from his village therefore he prefers to sell it to merchants than at the Mandi to avoid transportation costs. He grows 8-10 quintal of cotton per acre and sells it at the rate of Rs 5800 per quintal. He is currently farming cotton over 7 acres. He also farms bananas which he has at the moment planted over 4 acres of his farm land.
His message to Krishi Jagran readers and viewers is that farmers should be given the correct rate for their crops, low rates for our crops is a big problem for the farmers locally. Also we farmers should get good quality seeds, for example for the Red Lady papayas that he grows, you can get seeds for Rs 750, Rs1000 and Rs 3500 and he is left undecided about which ones to use for farming.
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