As International Women’s Day approaches, Outlook brings to light Anita Negi’s journey from being a small farmer to a successful entrepreneur, inspiring many farmers, especially women, in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh
Innovation can help script successful turnaround stories—stories that can inspire others and help break stereotypes. Anita Negi, 52, a farmer living in the remote Talagali village in Banjar sub-division in Kullu—which happens to be one of the least developed regions in Himachal Pradesh—has scripted one such turnaround story that has the potential to inspire others, especially women farmers who are keen to become entrepreneurs. By adopting innovative farming techniques, she now manages to earn Rs 40 lakh a year—no debt, no banking liabilities.
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Negi has been a farmer for the past 25 years, ever since she got married. “We used to grow garlic, cabbage, peas and tomatoes and the profit was also good. However, we used to spray chemical fertilisers and gradually realised that it was destroying the fertility of our land. The near-absence of enzyme activity, apart from lack of microbial growth, was a clear sign of poor soil health,” she says. High input costs and declining productivity were other major concerns.
The year 2018 changed it all. “I attended an interactive session organised in my village. Rajeshwar Singh Chandel, who was the then executive director of the Prakritik Kheti Kisan Khushal Yojana, and his team of agricultural scientists had come to propagate the PK3Y technique which promotes the concept of chemical-free farming,” she recalls.
Negi loved the technique and wanted to give it a try but wasn’t very confident to make the switch. She decided to adopt chemical-free farming in the kitchen garden. She handled the entire operation, switched over to inter-cropping technique and ditched chemical fertilisers. The input cost was zero and the experiment was a success.
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Negi has motivated over 200 women farmers and housewives. She inspires them to transform barren fields into profit-generating soil and turn entrepreneurs.
“This motivated me to adopt the technique of PK3Y on a three-bigha land. I planted some fruit plants and six other cash crops like tomatoes, garlic, spinach, coriander, and peas. It worked as well,” she says. Their expenditure was reduced to half as they started using cow dung and urine and other household waste on the farm.
“Now I am not only growing healthy produce but also creating awareness in my community to adopt natural farming. At the end of the day, the health of the farmers and consumers is the most important factor,” she says.
Gradually, Negi opened fruit nurseries and planted apples, plums, pears, kiwis and pomegranates in the remaining four bighas of land. She produced 1,500 saplings in 2020, 20,000 saplings in 2022, and by 2023 she had a root stock of 25,000 fruit saplings. All are grown using natural farming methods.
Emerging as a leader in innovative natural farming, Negi has educated and motivated almost 200 other women farmers and housewives. She inspires them to transform barren fields into profit-generating soil and turn entrepreneurs. She also inspires schoolchildren to adopt these techniques.
She is also a recipient of several awards and honours at the national and state level, besides being a driving force to encourage farming among the hill families in the region. Every day, dozens of women farmers reach out to her to learn the technique of chemical-free farming and procurement of fruit saplings as well as entrepreneurship skills.
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Commenting on the success story scripted by Negi, Rakesh Kanwar, who is currently secretary of Information and Public Relations, says: “Women in Himachal Pradesh have traditionally been actively involved in farming. But now they are more knowledgeable because of the training and capacity-building workshops that are being organised.” He adds: “Entrepreneurs like Negi are helping to promote sustainable agriculture which is going to help deal with climate change and help in biodiversity sustenance and income generation.”
Kanwar, who has also served as the project director of natural farming, informs that many women farmers have formed groups and are collectively marketing their produce through farmer-producer organisations after getting certification. They have shifted from mono-cropping to inter-cropping as they realised it is more profitable in small farms.
When farmers in Himachal, Uttarakhand and other states are finding farming to be an unviable profession and are either migrating or abandoning their farms for better options, women like Negi are proving to be an inspiration. Her story demonstrates that you don’t have to attend the best of schools or have in-depth bookish knowledge to be an entrepreneur. Through her innovative hill farm techniques, she has inspired many, especially women.
NOTE – This article was originally published in outlookindia and can be viewed here
