How Booming Interest of This B.Tech Graduate, Made Him Choose Agriculture as His Full-Time Career
Meet Lovepreet Singh, a young lad with B.Tech. Degree in his hand, who instead of having a choice of doing a desk job and living a comfortable city life, choose to stay in his village to reap prosperity out of agriculture.
About 20 km towards east from district headquarters Sangrur, Kapial village is situated in Bhawani Garh tehsil, where Lovepreet Singh is living with his father, grandfather, mother and sister.
In 2008-2009, Lovepreet started organic farming of wheat on just 1 acre of land because of his growing interest in the agriculture field. Rest of the land was given on lease to other farmers, as farming was never a primary source of income for Lovpreet’s family. Moreover, Lovpreet’s father- Mr. Sant Pal Singh was settled in Dubai and had a stable income to support the family needs.
As the time passed, Lovepreet’s interest grew more and his motherland called him back. Soon after completing his degree, he thought of taking his big step towards farming. He got his land soil sample tested by Punjab Agro and took rest of his land back from the farmers.
The next crop that Lovepreet organically cultivated on his land was turmeric and along with that he also started processing it by himself. Turmeric on 1 acre and wheat-paddy on 4 acres. But adopting organic farming completely was not acceptable by Lovepreet’s family. In 2010, when his father returned from Dubai, he was against Organic Farming, because in his views organic yields less productivity. But no criticism and no bad words had the power to stir the strong determination of Lovepreet.
To increase his income, Lovepreet decided of cultivating turmeric on large basis instead of wheat. In the beginning, he faced many problems in turmeric processing, as he had no knowledge of it, but with his efforts and expert advice, he was able to achieve all the difficulties. He started using cow and buffalo dung as manure in his field to increase the productivity and quality of the crop.
After seeing the results, his father also started helping him in farming. He even contacted Punjab Agro to get his turmeric powder get organic certification and by the end of this year, he will get that. Currently, he is actively involved in turmeric farming and processing. Whenever he gets time, he visits Punjab Agriculture University and read books suggested by the experts of the university to bring positive outcome in his farming. Punjab Agro also helps him with necessary information and make him interact with other progressive farmers who are actively involved in organic farming. Other than turmeric he is also cultivating Wheat, Paddy, Maize, Bajra, but on small scale.
His future plan is to expand turmeric farming and processing work, and form a group of farmers doing organic farming. Purchase common machines for the use of the group and support farmers doing organic farming.
The one message that I want to convey to the farmers is that organic farming is very important to conserve the environment. Everyone should do organic and eat organic, in this way pollution can also be reduced.
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