Karnataka   

Farmer hits a jackpot with fish farming

RICH HAUL: A man casting a net at an artificial tank created on a wasteland at Kanyakollur in Shahapur taluk of Gulbarga district.

KANYAKOLLUR (GULBARGA DISTRICT): An enterprising farmer has shown the way for government agencies and fellow farmers on achieving the twin objective of reaping rich from the waste lands and reclaiming the lands affected by water logging in the command areas of the Upper Krishna Project in this tiny village in Shahapur taluk of Gulbarga district.

Sharanappa Saladpur has not only proved that the lands wasted by the water logging due to the seepage of water from the canals and the drain water left into the agriculture fields from the command areas, can still provide a steady income through his fish farm and within two years the wasted lands has been reclaimed and made fit for agriculture.

In the command areas of Shahapur taluk alone, over 14,000 hectares of agricultural land were affected by water logging and had become unfit for agriculture and in the neighbouring Surpur taluk, the problem of water logging was still more serious and more than 20,000 hectares of land were affected by water logging.

With the Government groping in dark to find a permanent solution to reclaim these precious lands as the conventional methods of reclaiming these wastelands were not only time consuming but also expensive, the initiative taken by this farmer should be an example for the Government and the individual farmers who had lost their land for no fault of theirs, to reclaim them through some initial investment.

Mr. Saladpur, who was once a senior leader of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) and contested twice to the State Assembly from Shahapur Assembly Constituency, told The Hindu here on Friday that when he purchased 18 acres of land in 2003 by paying Rs. 6.30 lakh, he had hoped to reap rich dividents using the irrigation facilities available by cultivating paddy. “I burnt my fingers in the two seasons when I cultivated paddy in the field and after that the land became fallow because of water logging and alkanity,” he said.

Thanking the Senior Assistant Director of the Fisheries Department, Devaraj Yadav, for motivating him to build a fish farm by creating an artificial tank in the fallow land by providing all the technical details, Mr. Saladpur said he had invested Rs. 21.5 lakh for the creation of an artificial tank on 17.12 acres of land and purchasing more than 1 lakh seedlings of different varieties of freshwater fishes, including the “Ruhu” fish, a variety much sought after in West Bengal and other North Eastern States; Catla, another popular freshwater fish; Murugal, Common Carp and Silver Carp.

The farmer is all set to harvest the first crop of the fishes in June or July and hopes to make good 50 per cent of the investment in the first year itself.

Mr. Yadav said the Fisheries Department provided him the technical know how in rearing the fish in the artificial pond and helped the farmer in getting the seedlings and fingerlings from different fish farms in the State.

Mr. Saladpur said in two years, the land where the artificial tank had been established would be fit for agriculture, but “I do not want to go for agriculture once again and prefer to continue the fish farm since it is more economical and less labour-oriented”.

With two helpers, the farmer was able to maintain the tank and provide periodic food of groundnut oil cake and rice bran to the fishes in the tank as against the labour-intensive paddy cultivation.

Mr. Yadav said at present the Centre provided a subsidy of Rs. 16,000 an acre to the maximum of 10 acres for taking up inland fisheries and the State Government was not providing any subsidy to farmers. If more subsidy was provided for taking up inland fisheries more farmers who had lost their lands would come forward to take up inland fisheries and reclaim their lost land.

So far, nobody had experimented inland fisheries in the lands affected by water logging and alkanity to reclaim the land as well earn some money from the wastelands in the command areas. The problem of alkanity and water logging in other command areas in Tunghabadra , Malaprabha and Ghataprabha is more severe.

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