Tune in with our story of Sandeep Gitte, a farmer from Nandagaul, Maharashtra, and how horticulture proved to be a miracle for him and many others with this practice.

It is an inspiring and successful story of a farmer, Sandeep Gitte, from Nandagaul, Marathwada. On February 4, 2019, under our One Million Fruit Trees campaign, Sandeep Gitte planted 2.5 acres of Papaya (2200 plants). A month later, he planted an intercropping of watermelon on 1.5 acres of his land to supplement his income and offset the cost of the papaya plantation. When he first switched to horticulture, Sandeep's neighbors thought he was taking a huge risk by switching over to papaya plantations.

In September, when his plants bore fruit, he got in touch with fruit buyers who came to the farm and bought the whole crop. These papayas were transported to Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and Madhya Pradesh. Not a single papaya was sold in Parli. After the first few cuttings of papaya, he had earned significantly more from the same parcel of land than what he had earned from soya plantations. Slowly, everyone in the village realized that Gitte's risk had paid off. Eight farmers joined him, and he provided tutelage to them in methods of preparing organic slurry that would help the plant.

One of the farmers who had switched to Papaya after getting inspired by Gitte, Keshav Babaji Gitte said that in his 72 years as a farmer, he had never seen so much money. Arun Gitte, another farmer who had become addicted to alcohol, gave up alcohol after he started earning around 2.5 lakh rupees from papaya plantations. Today, there are 30 papaya farmers in Sandeep Gitte's village, and they do not have to worry about finding a market for their produce. The market comes to their village to buy products from them.

The production of Papaya per tree is around 51 kg. Therefore, the profit from Papaya and intercrop per acre earns him an income of Rs. 6,85,000 after accounting for capital and operating costs.

For Sandeep, who had been earning between Rs 10,000 and 20,000 per acre while growing staple crops such as soya and jowar, this is a BIG jump in his income after switching to horticulture.