Ever since his sons decided not to join him in farming and went abroad, farmer Sukhwinder Singh Khakh (57) of Dyalpur village of Kartarpur chose to diversify his work and instead take to something that helps him reap more profits and invest less time.

“Seasonal vegetables and crops involve a lot of effort. The entire family has to get involved so as to manage the crop, harvest it and market it. Even then the gains are not much. I toured abroad in the past few years, visited many orchards and understood their techniques for getting more harvest. I collected seeds from wherever I used to go and started growing them in my farm here. The results have been great. The fruits that I grew here managed to sell well in the market. Every year, I multiplied these plants and now instead of selling the fruits, my focus is on readying more plants in the nursery and marketing the saplings of these exotic varieties,” said Khakh.

Sukhwinder Singh Khakh, Farmer

Seasonal vegetables and crops involve a lot of effort. The entire family has to get involved so as to manage the crop and market it. Even then the gains are not much.

The farmer showed his demonstration farm spread in an acre of land where he has been growing dragon fruits, golden apples, avocadoes, 10-15 varieties of mango, jujube (apple-ber) fruits, pomegranates, bananas and grapes. Walking past the pillars of concrete erected for planting dragon fruits, he showed the flowers erupting in the plants.

“The colourful flower blossoms only for one night. It dies by the next morning and then bears the fruits. The fruits, which have started developing now, will ripen around November-December. There are four dragon plants around one pillar. There will be so much fruiting that I may get 25-30 fruits per pillar. Each fruit piece sells in the market for Rs 75-100. There is so much market of this fruit here. The demand is much higher than the production and many farmers are eagerly taking its plants and technology from me and have started raising their own dragon fruit farms,” he shared.

He added, “Even if we do not sell our produce in the market and just tell one of our workers to put up a stall of exotic fruits on Kartarpur highway, it gets sold within an hour, fetching us even more price than mandis. I have recently harvested my apple ber. The volume of produce was really high. It got sold within a few days. Even after selling whole of the produce, people kept on inquiring for more fruit at my farm as they found it very juicy and delicious.”

Khakh showed how he protected his golden apple (unusual for plains) using plastic nets. “The birds had been destroying my apple but the net kept the fruits safe this time,” he said showing varieties of mangoes, including Cambodian purple skin mango, elongated mangoes and various other exotic varieties which he said were fetching him much more price than even the alphonsos.