Fifteen-year-old Arjun Ashok from Mithrakary in Kuttanad recently achieved a remarkable feat by winning the Agriculture department’s award for best student farmer (schoolboy) in the State. What made the achievement all the more sweet was that he scripted the success story in farming after battling challenges posed by recurring floods.
Arjun was drawn to farming at a very young age and never looked back. “I learned the first steps of farming from my mother. A MGNREGS worker, she identified my penchant for agriculture and encouraged me. I began cultivating vegetables on my own, albeit on a small scale, at the age of 10. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to shut down, I used most of my free time to better understand agriculture and expanded cultivation,” says Arjun, a Class X student at St. Xavier’s High School, Mithrakary, for whom schooling and farming are equally significant.
Arjun Ashok with rabbits at his farm at Mithrakary in Kuttanad, Alappuzha. | Photo Credit: The Hindu
Today, the student farmer cultivates a wide variety of veggies and flowers on around 50 cent of land, which includes his family plot and adjacent land owned by his relatives and neighbours, mostly applying biopesticides and compost produced from kitchen and animal waste, water hyacinth and so on. Besides, he is raising goats, rabbits, chickens and silkie.
Undeterred by setbacks
His obsession with agriculture saw him prevail over even the most crippling setbacks. Arjun, a couple of months ago, cultivated veggies and marigolds with an eye on Onam. The heavy downpours and floods that hit Kuttanad in July destroyed his many plants.
“It is not the first time floods affected farming. I suffered losses but it only strengthened my resolve. After the floods, I started again and cultivated spinach, okra, brinjal, long beans and bitter gourd,” says Arjun, adding that the support given by the Agriculture department is an inspiration.
He is cultivating some of the veggies in grow bags. On an experimental basis, marigolds are being grown in grow bags on a wooden platform to prevent them from getting flooded. The young farmer mostly sells agricultural produce at the weekly farmers’ market of the local Krishi Bhavan. The proceeds from the sales are deposited in his own bank account.
“Arjun started farming at a tender age. He is doing cultivation almost single-handedly. He grows vegetables and flowers without applying chemical pesticides,” says Lekshmi R. Krishnan, agricultural officer, Krishi Bhavan, Muttar.
He is supported by his mother, Sobha Ashok, and father, Ashok Kumar.
