Morning walkers of Kuvempu Nagar in Hassan city normally pay a visit to Hema Ananth’s place on 3rd Cross to purchase organically grown vegetables, fruits, and green leaves among other things. Interestingly, there is no shopkeeper. The visitors take the items they want and drop the cash, as per the price chart displayed, into a box on a table and leave.
This has been going on for the last 10 years and Hema Ananth, the progressive farmer who has won many awards for experiments with agriculture, claims she has never been cheated by anybody so far. “I earn anywhere between ₹1,000 to 1,200 daily by selling produce from my farm. While I am busy with my household chores in the morning and evening hours, customers come and take away products they want,” she said. She sells virgin coconut oil manufactured from coconuts from her farm, eggs, butter, milk, vegetables and fruits. On her farm, she has 25 cows and gets around 60 litres of milk a day. “There are 20 regular customers for milk and they pay me once in a month,” she said.
Hema Ananth has been chosen for the State-level Can Bank Best Farmer Award, which will be conferred on her at the inauguration of Krishi Mela at GKVK Campus in Bengaluru on November 15. The award carries a purse of ₹25,000. Influenced by her father Krishnappa, she took up agriculture on 28 acres of land at Gowripura near Hassan 21 years ago and began growing red roses. “I did not know about agriculture when I started it. My father supported me alot. He asked me to get into the field saying the land would teach me. I went on experimenting and succeeded,” she said.
Marketing products
On her farm, she has a unit to manufacture coconut oil and then sells the same. She manufactures many by-products of the produce and markets them. “I am successful as an agriculturist because I add value to the agriculture products and market them. I sell many herbal beauty products as well,” she said. She earns more than ₹15 lakh per year from her field.
Her husband Anantharaju, a retired executive engineer, and their two sons, engineers working abroad, support her work.