The State government’s Atal Gram development agency backed strawberry project is reaping benefits for the women of Verlem village
Here is some good news. You do not have to travel all the way to Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra to eat strawberries. You can simply drive 70 kms south-east of Margao city any time between December and March and pick and eat your strawberries in the Verlem village inside the Netravali wildlife sanctuary.
Yes, Verlem village, nestled in the Western Ghats of South Goa is now home to the Goan strawberry. Of course, this is not breaking news anymore. The juicy fruit has had two avatars in Goa.
Let us start at the beginning. Circa 2013 saw a team from the Panaji based Mineral Foundation of Goa (MFG) hand-hold the Verlem villagers to set up their first strawberry farm.
MFG initiated a village eco-tourism project called ‘Aangan’ in the village of Verlem. This allows urban tourists, both domestic and foreign, to experience forest life up-close by using the home-stay system in Verlem village.
Speaking to Business Goa, Parag Rangnekar, programme manager, MFG explained why strawberry cultivation was chosen as a project. “The objective was to add value to the ecotourism project and create an alternative source of income for the community which is land based,” Rangnekar said.
According to Rangnekar, they selected a group of 15 women from a women’s self-help group in Verlem to work on the first, strawberry farm in Verlem in the winter of 2013. “Strawberry is a labour intensive crop and hence we chose a women’s self-help group (SHG) to work on the farm. Market linkage was and remains the biggest challenge due to the perishable nature of the crop. The group cultivated for two years. In the first year, market linkage to the wholesale market in Margao was established but it was broken by the SHG since retail sales at the site picked up after the project received publicity. But in the second year the retail sales dipped. Also the saplings were procured late by the SHG which impacted yield. MFG did not support the group financially in the second year, but continued providing technical support,” Rangnekar said.
Rangnekar is of the opinion that the subsidy and support culture must stop. “One time support is okay, especially for a new crop. However, continued support makes people dependent,” he said.
Enter Verlem strawberry farming, version 2.0. The late chief minister Manohar Parrikar is said to have singled out the Verlem village as a model village for intensive rural development. Setting up the Atal Gram Development Agency, a state driven agency under the Societies Registration Act, Parrikar handpicked Vijay Saxena, a state bureaucrat to drive the revival of the strawberry project and allied projects in the year 2015.
Speaking to Business Goa, Saxena who is project director, Atal Gram development agency credited the late chief minister for his enthusiasm and foresight. “We decided to hand-hold the Verlem women to revive the strawberry cultivation in the village. To begin with, we took a small contingent of the Verlem women to the strawberry farms of Mahabaleshwar to acquaint them with local farmers and their farming techniques. We later tied up with the Mahabaleshwar strawberry farmers associations for the supply of plants and other support services,” Saxena said.
According to Saxena, his team also identified a natural water source in the hills of Netravali. The team constructed a one-kilometre long pipeline from the hills to the Verlem farms employing local labour, identified three, separate women’s self-help groups and three farms in Verlem and acquainted the women with the methods and techniques required for strawberry cultivation before starting work in the winter of 2018.
The Atal Gram development agency team also fixed storage water tanks and drip irrigation systems on all three farms. “The first year saw us procure all the plants from Mahabaleshwar, the organic fertilisers, the mulching paper etc. However, we helped the three women SHGs open their bank accounts and want them to become self-sufficient in the coming years. In the second year for instance, the women’s SHGs spent INR 90,000 and purchased their own organic fertilisers and mulching paper,” Saxena said.
Saxena is gung-ho about the financial viability of the strawberry farms. According to him, the total yield from the first year (2018-19) was 8,442 kgs of strawberries from three farms yielding total revenues of INR 12,50,000 at an average selling price of INR 148 per kg. In the current fiscal, Saxena expects a total yield of 6,700 kgs from the two operational farms and a total income of INR 21,44,000 at an increased selling rate of INR 320 per kg. Says Saxena, “This year, the quality of the fruit is better as the farmers have gained in experience.”
Saxena is also not overtly worried about farm to market linkages. “At the present moment, Verlem attracts many tourists, especially over the weekends. The women SHGs are doing brisk retail business,” Saxena said.
A visit to the Verlem strawberry farms on December 30th, which was a Monday revealed a fair number of visiting tourists and brisk sales of strawberries at the farm counters. Laxmi Gaonkar, a chirpy member of the Bhumika SHG on the larger of the two farms said, “We do good business on weekends. We sow the plants around September and the fruits are ready in December. The season ends in March.”
Likewise, Ranjana Gaonkar, her counterpart from the smaller Shivshakti SHG group in the neighbouring Padalwada village said, “We have priced a 250 gms strawberry box at INR 80 this year and sell about 100 boxes every weekend.”
Going forward, Saxena is keen to expand the Atal Gram Yojana’s strawberry footprint to five farms next year. “We are talking to other groups of villagers in the Netravali sanctuary and hope to convince them about the benefits of strawberry cultivation,” Saxena said
