Minting money in a diverse way

‘‘We don’t mind paying the farmers here more; they give us quality,’’ says Indomint MD Rajendra P Ghogale. The company has contract farmers in China and Argentina as well, ‘‘but the ability to adopt and show initiative is much more in Punjab,’’ he adds.

The compliments flow both ways. ‘‘The company takes care of the usual worries. It provides us the base stock, has the sowing supervised by experts, who also follow up on the progress and recommend fertilisers and pesticides, and oversees the harvesting and oil-distillation. At the end of the day, mint brings more profits than wheat or other crops,’’ says Jawinder Singh, who has a mint oil distillation plant in a corner of his land.

Local farmers use mint as part of a three-cycle farming pattern, starting with mint (sown in mid-January or February and harvested in June), followed by Basmati (another ‘diversified’ crop) and the potato. The more enterprising go in for intercropping mint with wheat. ‘‘Since mint doesn’t use much fertiliser, the residue pushes up the yield of the next crop,’’ says Balvir Singh, deputy manager of the farm extension department of Indomint.

From its entry in 1997, when it had 75 acres of land under mint, to 13,000 acres (and nearly 7,000 farmers) today growing such varieties as Piperita, Spearmint and Arvensis, Indomint has drafted a success story worth emulating. An acre of mint yields 24-25 kg of oil, which the company buys for Rs 600/kg. Though an acre of wheat — 15-20 quintals — sells for an MSP of Rs 620/quintal, mint has far fewer risk factors and requires less inputs in comparison.

The biggest advantage, though, is the solid technological and extensive extension network, which has experts — including agronomists and entomolists — on call ‘‘unlike the government agriculture department people, who come once in a blue moon,’’ says Sarabjit Singh from Chakk Kalan, who grows mint on 40 acres of land.

There’s a lesson in here for the pundits of the government’s diversification programme. ‘‘It cannot succeed unless there’s a system of accountability and professionalism,’’ say the farmers working for Indomint. ‘‘This company doesn’t limit its advice to just mint, they help us even when we’re growing Basmati or potatoes,’’ says Manjinder Singh, a farmer from Rakba.