DEMAND TO LOCALLY PREPARE SEEDS AND SAPLINGS TO DRIVE DOWN COSTSPlea to make strawberries juicier for farmers

A strawberry field near Siliguri. (Passang Yolmo)

Binita Paul, TT, 22.11.19, Siliguri: The swell in strawberry farming in north Bengal has encouraged cultivators to demand that the government make available saplings and seeds at the local level so that the cost of production comes down.

Strawberry growers in north Bengal have to rely on saplings and seeds brought from Pune, where the materials are imported from California, Florida and Italy.

"As the planting materials are not available here, we have to bear extra costs to procure them from Pune. If we can get the materials here, we will be able to expand our cultivation and more farmers will be inter- ested in starting strawberry farming," said Ratan Das, a Siliguri farmer. According to him, there is a huge demand for strawberries in Bihar and Assam. "In recent times, the demand is also increasing in Bengal," he added. Sources said COFAM, a centre that works on agriculture under North Bengal University, had been promoting strawberry as a cash crop among farmers in rural areas of Siliguri and also in the Darjeeling hills. "Trial cultivation was done at COFAM. It was successful and small and marginal farmers were trained on the nitty-gritty of strawberry cultivation. Now, many of them are growing A strawberry field near Siliguri. Picture by Passang Yolmo the fruit, which fetches a decent price," said Amrendra Kumar Pandey, a practical demonstrator at COFAM. Told about the demand of the cultivators, he said the Darjeeling hills were a suitable places in north Bengal for preparing seeds and saplings.
"A matured plant produces 10 to 20 saplings. If we can nurture these saplings, the cost of cultivation will surely go down," he said.
As of now, a strawberry seedling brought from Pune costs around Rs 12 to 15. This can be reduced to Rs 7 or 8 if the saplings are made locally.
"Now that farmers are feeling interested in cultivating strawberries, we feel the state can take the initiate and open a nursery where saplings will be available," Pandey said.
To cultivate strawberry in a cottah of land, a farmer needs to buy around 400 saplings.
Sources said that along with the expenditure on the saplings, the farmer needs to bear some additional costs, pushing the expenses to around Rs 25 per plant, which works out to Rs 10,000 per cottah. If saplings can be made locally, the cost will come down to Rs 15 rupees per plant and make the cultivation more profitable.
From each plant, a farmer can harvest around 30 strawberries once a year, each of which is sold at Rs 5 on an average.
"This means a farmer can earn Rs 125 per plant, minus the cost of production. The earnings will increase if he no longer needs to procure seeds and saplings from Pune," Pandey said.