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EcoSikh Haryana Report July 2012

a village farmer happily posing with his papaya saplings


We have heard from our energetic and devoted volunteer, Gurpreet Singh, who has generated some ideas in Haryana which we hope that other Sikh communities will take up in their part of the world.  We hope that some of the readers of these newsletters will be inspired.
Just this month: Gurpreet and his cousin Karamjit Singh bought 1,100 mangos, lemon, guava, papaya, jamun, and cheekus trees from three government horticultural nurseries and transported them to around 30 remote villages, around 30 to 40 kilometers away from the nursery. They set up tree stalls in each village farms and gurdwaras and sold the trees at cost price, making no profit themselves.
“Any private nursery would sell these fruit saplings for five or 10 times the price that a government horticulture nursery would charge. But these remote villagers would never know this, as there is no adverts about plant rates in newspapers or on TV channels,” said Gurpreet, who has built a good relationship with horticulture nurseries in Haryana who are helping out this mission.
“We sell them high quality plants at no profit prices.” It is better than giving plants away, he said. “I am sure when people buy a plant there is least tendency to waste it.”
EcoSikh Haryana volunteers also helped out a small farmer in Kalwa village of Kurukshetra by planting 100 papaya saplings on his small piece of land. They estimate that these 100 trees, which cost Rs. 10 each (totaling Rs 600), would start bearing fruits within 12 months, returning a profit of about Rs. 80,000-100,000 per year for at least 4-5 years.
“We hope this will certainly be an inspiration for the rest of the small farmers around,” Gurpreet wrote to us in his report. Watch a picture show from Haryana about this news.