Members of Saharapada FPO visited Nipania village in Harichandanpur block of Keonjhar District for a poly house nursery exposure visit. This poly house was developed by an agribusiness entrepreneur, with the support of Shristi NGO and the horticulture department.
Exposure visit minutes:
Interacted with all the PG members about the nursery.
The Horticulture Department has provided a subsidy of 4 lakhs to the beneficiary.
The nursery has a total area of roughly 500mt sq.
In one season they grow about 1,20,000 seedlings at a time.
Before preparing the seedlings, they collect an advance deposit from the customer.
Various crops such as Cauliflower, Cabbage, Brinjal, Tomato, Chilly, Bitter gourd etc. seedlings are grown by the nursery.
They are properly maintaining the nursery by keeping it neat and clean, at all times.
They are hesitant to allow visitors, particularly women, into the nursey because they are concerned that the seedlings will be harmed by any disease that the visitors might be carrying with them.
Following our visit to the nursery, we all gathered with PG members to learn about the profit loss, register keeping, and human resource requirements for running the poly house.
Discussed about various challenges like water supply, using of sprayer and human resource and market demand.
Both the chilies and the brinjal are being grown. The biggest issue they encountered while watering the seedlings was that the sprayer was impacting the new seedlings, which were not as strong as the old seedlings. As a result, they are manually watering the plant, which requires two human resources to irrigate 1.2 lakh seedlings.
The BOD members learned how much perlite will be mixed with the vermicompost.
The prices of brinjal, tomato, chili, and bitter gourd seedlings were shared with the BOD members. With the exception of bitter gourd, the nursery sells seedlings for 1 rupee each. They are selling seedlings for 4 Rs. since bitter gourd seeds are expensive.
The BOD members learnt how to sow the seed through a stick in the tray.