Aryan Kumar, 22, in Bettiah city of West Champaran district has left behind his family’s traditional cultivation practices of food-crop plantation and weather-dependent farming. The geography graduate, who took a week-long course offered by the Bihar government’s Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA), has taken up cash crop farming that provides high yields, uses less water, and has lower risk than the traditional wheat, sugarcane, and paddy. He grows coriander, mushroom and capsicum, earning ₹10 to ₹12 lakh annually.
“I first started shade net farming of capsicum in 2021 on 7 katha of land [less than 1 acre]. We use fibre net, which helps control the sunlight according to the needs of the crops,” he says, adding that the company supplying the net also sells drip irrigation equipment for capsicum and sprinklers for coriander.
