Champua: Scores of women are still confined to their households, but some women have become successful farmers by taking up chick pea farming in tribal-dominated Champua area of Keonjhar.
These women farmers of Godhuli village have managed to strengthen their economy and earn enough to feed their families. They have shown the way to others who idle away their time.
Reports said, after paddy farming, women in this village cultivate chick pea. Chick pea has much demand in the market. They have been doing this farming over last few years. The government provides them seeds of chick pea.
Chick pea has been raised across acres of land. They harvest the produce within 100 days from the sowing.
After harvest, the women make bundles of the chick pea bearing plants and sell them in local market for Rs 10 to Rs 20 per bundle.
Some of them directly sell it to traders at the farmland. This farming has also spread in parts of Mayurbhanj too, as its demand is growing for its nutritional value.
Mandodari Nayak, a woman farmer of the village, asserted that chick pea cultivation fetches good earning for women in the village. “We have become self-dependent and managed to meet our daily expenses with earning from this farming. Demand for indigenous variety of chick pea has gone up. We lay stress on farming the desi sola,” she added.
Another woman farmer, Sashikala Nayak, said there is no marketing problem for chick pea in the local market as its demand is growing. “Government seeds are often supplied late. Apart from household works, we partly work for chick pea farming. But we have to keep watch on the birds that often feed on it. It is a profitable one,” she observed.
PNN
