AHMEDABAD: This family of 10 farmers has been minting money from a special type of potato, clocking a revenue of Rs 25 crore per annum, producing on average 20,000 metric tonnes! Jitesh Patel, a potato farmer from Dolpur Kampa village of Arvalli district, turned his and his family’s fortunes around after using his education in agriculture science to begin cultivating the Lady Rosetta (LR) variety of potato.
That variety is widely used for manufacturing potato chips and wafers. Today, he and his family earn crores by supplying the potatoes to leading potato chip manufacturers such as Balaji and ITC. Patel’s family has been growing potatoes for 26 years now. “After I completed MSc in agriculture in 2005, the goal was to return to farming,” said Patel, adding, “Earlier, our family used to cultivate the table variety of potatoes. However, I decided to diversify.”
Patel started cultivating the LR variety over a 10-acre land parcel in 2007. “Since the yield was good, I decided to involve other family members,” Patel told TOI on the sidelines of Global Potato Conclave-2020 in Gandhinagar. “As on date, we are 100% into LR potato cultivation over a land parcel of 1,000 acres,” he said.
Industry experts have underlined that the demand for the LR variety is poised to rise. “Potato chip manufacturers need consistent supply and quality of the LR variety,” said Sachid Madan, chief executive, Technico Agri Sciences Limited. “One lakh tonne of this variety was exported in 2019 from Gujarat to leading markets such as Indonesia, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Patel said all the ten members of his family have expertise in diverse areas, including breeding, pathology, microbiology, entomology and horticulture. The LR variety of potato is supplied to wafer and chip manufacturers based on a long-term contract and it fetches rates as high as Rs 17 per kg.
By Niyati Parikh & Kalpesh Damor ..
