DIMORIA: Keshab De, a farmer from Sialkati Pathar in Sonapur under the Dimoria constituency, said on Wednesday that he received 83 palm oil seedlings after requesting support through Assam Agriculture Minister Pijush Hazarika’s Facebook page.
De said he commented on the minister’s page on October 13 after seeing a post about palm oil, requesting seedlings for about five bighas of land. According to De, Hazarika contacted him within 10 minutes and the seedlings were sent to his home shortly afterwards.
He said he planted the 83 seedlings on four to five bighas of land on the 30th and 31st, and thanked the minister for what he described as assistance to a farmer.
De said he was taking up palm oil cultivation to assess for himself how profitable the crop could be. He said the minister had told him that it could generate an annual income of about Rs 2 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh, a figure De said he wanted to help make people aware of.
The farmer said he plans to use double cropping on the land, growing mustard alongside the palm oil plants and taking up other crops after harvesting the mustard. He also plans to plant 400 to 500 lemon saplings along the boundary and grow ginger and turmeric on one side.
De said he wanted to test the crop on his own land amid what he described as claims that palm oil cultivation damages the environment and dries up water. He said his experience would determine whether those concerns or the crop’s claimed returns prove correct, and added that he hoped other people in the constituency would adopt it if it is beneficial.
