Saurashtra to export baby corn to Walmart

“Baby corn farming gives double returns. I harvest four yields a year with lesser expenses and there is no need to go to the market to sell it. Walmart buys the fruit and the plants are used as cattle fodder,” said Ramjibhai Patel,a farmer from Gundasara village in Lodhika taluka of Rajkot.

For Ramjibhai,cultivation of baby corn on his 15 bighas of land now means an earning of Rs 25,000 per bigha every quarter against the Rs 10,000 that he used to make from cotton at the end of every eight months. “When I grow baby corn under contract,I have to invest something like Rs 10,000 in sowing and get around Rs 35,000 per bigha per season. That means a clear Rs 25,000 earning from each bigha,” he said.

While cotton has a growth cycle of 8 months,baby corn takes only four months to complete a cycle.Unlike cotton and groundnut,baby corn requires almost no pesticides and fertilisers. Moreover,baby corn cultivation is undertaken on land usually reserved for growing cattle fodder.

It all started as a pilot project in contract farming initiated by Champion Agro World,a Rajkot-based firm,with only 100 acres under cultivation in 2006. Today,baby corn covers over 4,000 acres and involves 800 farmers in Saurashtra- Rajkot,Surendranagar and Junagadh.

The same firm had signed an ambitious Rs 650 crore MoU focusing on contract farming with the Government of Gujarat during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in 2009. While it has so far been supplying baby corn through contract farming to a Delhi-based company,from April export to Walmart will begin.

“From April,we will be supplying 50 tonnes of baby corn to Walmart every month,” said Dhirubhai Patel,MD,Champion Agro World.

From providing baby corn seeds to giving agriculture solutions and tips and marketing the produce,the contractor company does everything.

“At present,the monthly production is around 5,000 tonnes. Once the cold storage and packaging facility are in place,supplies to Walmart will increase enormously,” said Patel.