Spinning Vineyards

For Tasgaon’s untutored farmers, it has been a long journey fighting water scarcity and poverty. ‘‘With not a single drop of drinking water, all this land was barren. We would wander around looking for petty jobs,’’ says 80-year-old Ananda Sawant.

Recounts Nanasaheb Arve, a second generation farmer: ‘‘Since the 1960s, farmers led by Ganpatrao Mhetre, Bhagvanrao Pawar and Vasantrao Arve, who had formed ‘Tasgaon Chaman group’ of farmers in this taluka toiled to develop vineyards after a visit to Nashik, Pune and Ahmednagar where there was grape cultivation. By 1965, the first vineyard came up in Tasgaon.’’

With help from S A Dhabolkar from Mouni University and agriculture expert P S Thakur, farmers have successfully developed vines which can bear more than 8 kg of grapes and vineyards that produce 8 to 10 tonnes of grapes per acre.

Seeing the demand from farmers from this region, the Maharashtra government had decided to launch a winery project in nearby Palus MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation). But farmers say government help is not enough.

‘‘The state government has done nothing for us, even when thousand acres of vineyards were destroyed two years ago because of unseasonal rains, the state government offered only assurances and insurance companies are not ready to take risk on this crop,’’ says Vishwanath Shinde, a small farmer from Nimni village.

‘‘We have been requesting the state government make some provision for water for many years. Then we decided to find a way ourselves,’’ say farmers. ‘‘Watering vineyards with tankers is expensive, so we decided to use rain water and also during summer irrigation water is stored in these tanks,’’ says Shiva Patil, a farmer from Savlaj village.

The vineyards of Tasgaon employ nearly 40,000 people. Women work in packing units and hundreds have migrated from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh to Tasgaon to work here.

As middlemen grab a large chunk of profit and many times dupe farmers, farmers here have demanded that the state government provide a helping hand to farmers to approach customers directly.