It’s not often that one comes across an agricultural labourer turned land-owner and employment provider.
But 37-year-old G.Pichaiah’s success is rooted in sensing an opportunity in farm mechanisation to transform his life four years ago.
When scores of drought-affected farmers in his native Dandempalli village in Nalgonda district were forced to sell off their cattle unable to provide fodder, the villagers soon had to depend on tractors for tilling land.
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The demand for tractors was so high that farmers would wait for days to hire a tractor.
That’s when Pichaiah felt owning a tractor would give him abundant work and enable him to earn more than what he did by working as a farm hand.
With no resources to raise the amount required to purchase a tractor, he settled for an alternative, the ‘tiller’ that is available at one-fourth a tractor’s cost but can be used for the same purpose in slushy fields.
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He did not waste time in purchasing a tiller with money raised by pledging his wife’s jewellery pieces and hand loans from others.
With a steady stream of orders for tilling the fields in the nearby villages, he soon saved enough to buy another tiller two years ago and employed a driver.
Pichaiah says he now tills two acres per day charging Rs.2,500 for an acre and earns over Rs.4,000 on each tiller. Of course, the work is seasonal from June to the first week of August and then again from November to the first week of December.
But the earnings are handsome for Pichaiah.
Busy with work orders, Pichaiah said that the peak season gets him plenty of orders from the farmers of Undempalli and Chandanapalli villages on the outskirts of Nalgonda.
Four years after his decision to purchase a tiller, Pichaiah is a content man who lives in his own house, bought a piece of agricultural land and sends his two sons to a private school.
A life he had never dreamt of as a farm hand.