Reds are coming to oust potatoes

Banaskantha district brings to mind potatoes - lots of them - thanks to Deesa, the unofficial potato capital of Gujarat. Farmers of the district started producing potatoes in large quantities about a decade back, thanks to McDonald's demand for `factory grade' variety of the tuber.
But pomegranates are fast catching up and business in the fruit is believed to have crossed the Rs 100-crore mark.Banaskantha pomegranates are in demand everywhere in India and also exported to Bangladesh, Dubai, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
Commercial farming of pomegranates had started earlier but experts credit 51-year-old Zinabhai Patel for making it a big success. He started cultivating pomegranates a decade ago in Sarkari Goliya village.
Zinabhai said he had heard Maharashtra had a good crop of pomegranates and that farmers there had made a lot of money.
"Hence, I replaced traditional crops such as potatoes and castor with pomegranates," Zinabhai said. "I attracted a lot of criticism from my own family members. In fact, my brothers who had planted saplings destroyed their crop."
But Zinabhai did not lose hope. In 2009-10, his faith and hard work fi nally paid off when he sold his crop or a record Rs 1.6 crore.
Today he has 11 hectares of land n which he has sown 11,000 saplings.One hectare's yield gets around Rs 25 akh to Rs 30 lakh, he said.
His success encouraged more than 250 farmers in places such as Dhanera, Deesa, Deodar, Tharad and Vavo grow pomegranates. Zinabhai's own village has more than 70% of its farmers growing the fruit. In December and May, traders from Delhi, Jaipur, Nagpur and Kolkata camp in Banaskantha to strike a deal for the fruit. Ramjibhai Bhatol, a farmer from a village near Palanpur, said the Sinduri or Bhagwa is the most cultivated variety because of its rich fruit and sweeter juice.
"The basic difference between Gujarat and Maharashtra in pomegranate farming is that Gujarat produces fruits mainly for eating while Maharashtra produces more varieties which are also used for wine-making and food processing," said Bhatol.
He further said that around 70% of the crop in his 22 bighas of land is exported. "Hence, we have to maintain a high quality," he said.
Potato prices being erratic, farmers in the past had to feed the tuber to animals or destroy entire crops. Pomegranates, on the other hand, are in high demand due to their use as fruit juice and for their medicinal properties.
"Farmers are investing heavily in technology such as drip irrigation and crop quality monitoring," an official of the state agriculture department said. "Some have been to Israel to learn new technology. Today the average plantation is 1,000 trees per person."