The techie, who spent 11 years of his 15-year career in 10 countries abroad and returned to his native village at the foothills of the Western Ghats, is today making profits as a dairy farmer.
Though M. Shankar Kotian started the dairy at Moodu Konaje village sometime ago, he has started making profits out of the enterprise now.
“Milk is the only farm product where one can get 80 per cent of the retail price. And it drew me to dairying,” Mr. Kotian said. Started with five cows on the 8 acre land in a serene atmosphere, he now has 40 head of cattle, with 19 milking right now. He has been selling about 200 litres of milk a day to Dakshina Kannada Cooperative Milk Union Ltd. and earns an average Rs. 31 per litre.
“Dairying is like a Test match. You have to be patient,” he said, as one cannot expect “profit” immediately. But dairying is the only farm activity where one could get daily income or weekly income and market the product directly to customers without middlemen.
Mr. Kotian also uses gobar gas for cooking and sells slurry to farmers. So far he has sold about 3 lakh litres of slurry.
Last rainy season, he grew 70 kg of paddy in 4 cents of land (435 sq. ft). He nurtured his crop with only “jeevamruta” (a mixture of cow urine, cow dung, jaggery, soil and sugarcane juice), he said.
Well-trained
Interestingly, he did not jump into farming without a thought. He did so after studying dairying in Switzerland and other countries and preparing a business model for his venture in the village. He has machines to milk the cows. “I do not know how to milk manually!” admits Mr. Kotian candidly.
An alumnus of NITK, Surathkal, he completed B.Tech. in computer science in 1996.
His family did not have any inherited farmland and his parents were not farmers. Hence dairying was totally new to him.
Coming back to the nature was a conscious decision. I and my wife were ready to downgrade our lifestyle. When the company applied for the U.S. green card for me, I stopped it and decided to come back home.
M. Shankar Kotian
