A 29 year old Punjabi farmer has got something the Americans will pay thousands of dollars for. Each little bit is tiny but there are a lot of them; he produces them he and the price is high because each one is guaranteed, Guess what he’s selling?
The answer is hybrid vegetable seeds. In the last season he grew $250,000 worth to fulfill his second contract with an American seed company.
His name is Satbir Singh and he belongs to the Tomato Capital of Northern India, Nijarpura, in Amritsar district. For years now his father, Vassan Singh has been one of the major growers there with more than 100 acres under the ctop. A progressive farmer himself, Vassan Singh has been quick to take to better varieties and cultivation practices and always on the lookout for opportunities to expand.
With his father’s example before him, it was only natural for Satbir to glam right on to the tomato business. After completing his BSc in agriculture from PAU, he Set to work improving the machinery with the plants are cultivated and thereafter he started looking for the perfect tomato variety high yielding with long life off the vine and ability to withstand the journey to distant urban markets.
His search took him to the USA. 1983 saw him set off for the University of California at Davis, a Student again. It was during his years there that he got in touch with the seed companies. An introduction to seed companies in Taiwan also turned out to be fruitful, He spent some time with the Taiwanese seeds men and has been able to apply some of their methods.
4 By the time he got back to NijJarpura he had realized that while tomatoes are big, bigger still is the hybrid seed business. He already had a contract for $60,000 worth of seeds in his pocket. But he was in trouble because that year the weather god did not smile on Punjab not for seed growing purposes anyway. Determined not to muff his first chance, Satbir rented land near Solan and produced his first seed crop there. The purchasers were delighted and when the contract for the next season was drawn up they undertook to buy, four times as much.
Success has given Satbir ideas of contracting out the work, to as many as 500 small farmers ultimately. If supplied seeds of the parent strains and trained in the techniques, he feels the educated young farmers of his state could turn out top-class seeds. He explains that in terms of value added, hybrid seeds represent the most profitable possible use of land, even very small holdings and the demand for quality seeds is high, both in India and abroad.
“It’s no use working hard night and day unless you’re making good money off of what you grow. The traditional crops don’t fetch that much anymore so you have to learn how to produce the paying crops if you want to stay in farming,” he says.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 15, 1989
