A farmer in Maharashtra's Akola district has come up with an unique concept — a goat ban — to boost the agriculture industry and ensure better profit among the farming community
The bank was launched in July 2019 by 52-year-old Naresh Deshmukh, who has now opened up about the functioning of this 'extraordinary bank'.
Speaking to India Today, the graduate from Punjab Rao Krishi Vidyapeeth talked about what made him ideate this loan scheme programme. During his regular visits to Akola district's Sangavi Mohadi village, Deshmukh had noticed how women from the economically weaker sections of the society engaged well in goat rearing. With that they could also afford small pieces of land, provide education to their children and even host marriages with a decent budget.
This gave Deshmukh the idea of bringing this entire business under a more organised sector and hence, he decided to launch this scheme.
Each person availing the loan, has to pay a registration fee of Rs 1200. According to the terms of the loan, after borrowing one goat, the person has to return four lambs within a time period of 40 months.
As per the report, Deshmukh has made an investment of Rs 40 lakh from his savings and bought 340 full-grown goats. Subsequently, 340 goat breeding families were registered and all of them were distributed among the fellow farmers.
He has estimated that each woman can make upto Rs 2.5 lacs of profit under this scheme.
Bringing in goats to boost business has been up in the trend lately.
In another similar development, a farmer from the United Kingdom decided to rent out her goats for online Zoom meetings to earn some extra bucks during the pandemic. She had put this idea as a joke on her website but the response to it was unexpected. As later reported, she received 200 emails from those who got curious after reading about the innovative concept.
As the idea materialised, the owner of the Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Rossendale, Lancashire, has so far earned £50,000 (Rs 49,80,919) from this business.
The goats at her farm join Zoom meetings and surprise the participants, just to lighten up the day. Those willing to hire the goats can pay a charge of £5. Staff members of the farm join the video call via the link shared by the meeting organisers and that’s how the goat appears in the scheduled meetings.
Dot used the money earned through this business idea to not only keep her farm running and staff employed during the pandemic, but also was able to introduce some improvements in her farm.