Apr.5, 2010

This farmer makes roses bloom in a desert
One litre of rose oil fetches Rs 3.75 lakh but he has to go to UP to sell it
SP Sharma
Tribune News Service

Kalalwala (Talwandi Sabo), April 4
At the crack of dawn, a group of 80 men, women and children get busy plucking roses from the six-acre farm of Rajinderpal Singh. The exercise is completed by 9 am when the flowers are sealed in boilers with mud paste on the cover to extract rose oil, which has a good market here and abroad.

This is the success story of Rajinderpal who, through his innovative effort, has in the waterlogged village in the desert area of Kalalwala near Talwandi Sabo made roses bloom in his farm.

The intelligently planned diversification was fetching anything between Rs 3.50 lakh to Rs 3.75 lakh per litre of rose oil. The entire activity of plucking roses and extracting oil is possible only two months in a year, says Rajinderpal. The farm has become a seasonal source of employment as each person is paid Rs 3 for each kilogramme of pluck. Generally each labourer plucks 10 to 15 kg of flowers every morning.

He is perhaps the only farmer who is engaged in this type of activity in this part of Punjab. He has set up in the backyard of his house an indigenously developed boiler system to extract rose oil by experts from Uttar Pradesh.

He sold a litre of rose oil for Rs 3.50 lakh last year and is holding back a stock of 4 litres, waiting for the price to improve. He is expecting a bumper harvest this year as roses are in full bloom in his farm. He is expecting to pluck 15 to 16 quintals of flowers this season.

He says that the flower crop over each acre gives a yield of only 200 to 250 millilitre of rose oil. The residue is marketed as rose water that, too, has a good domestic market.

Rajinderpal took up the challenging job of cultivating roses at a time when most of the government buildings, including the school and health centre, were abandoned due to acute problem of water logging that had rendered the land infertile. Moreover, the village is situated in the desert area where extra effort had to be put in to make the land fit for floriculture.

He says that a sum of Rs 80,000 was annually being spent for the upkeep of the farm, whereas he was earning anything between Rs 50,000 to Rs 80,000 from each acre of rose cultivation. He has hired an expert hand, Mujeeb Khan, of Hathras in UP to extract good quality rose oil. He comes to the village only for a month during which the activity of extraction of oil and packing is done.

Rajinderpal says that due to lack of marketing facility of his produce in Punjab, he has to go all the way to UP to sell the rose oil. The tendency of the middlemen in the trade is to exploit the innocent farmers by keeping a big margin of money with them. The rose oil traders at Delhi pay less than those in UP for the produce.

For extracting oil, he has brought specially designed copper utensils from UP where rose oil business was flourishing. He is planning to expand the area under rose cultivation to make handsome earnings out of the business.