Protected Cultivation- The future of Indian Agriculture

Why Greenhouse Farming or Protected Cultivation is the next big this?

Protected cultivation is an evolving technology to grow vegetables, flowers, and others high valued crops like Tomato, capsicum, cucumber, melons, rose, gerbera, carnation and chrysanthemum can be grown under a vast range of protected structures like Poly houses, Nethouse, Poly-tunnels. The PPU (production per unit) area can give yields that is 10 times more than open filed farming. Income from the same can increase by 20x.

Greenhouse Farming Helps Also Helps In Addressing Food Security And Malnutrition Problem Of India

Protected cultivation or Greenhouse farming as method of farming has significantly low adoption rate in India. The area under protected cultivation was 0.23% of the total area under the horticulture cultivation back in India in FY”2012 which has grown to ~1%. This is due to the limited exposure of this technology to a handful of progressive farmers. Even these farmers who are trying this modern method of cultivation, are dependent on the financial assistance provided by the government under national boards such as NHM, NHB and RKVY. This is because of the high initial cost of these structures and lack of expertise among farmers for protected cultivation.

Seeing the vast potential that it has in improving the economic status of an agrarian economy there have to be more efforts from the private and corporate front to popularize this concept among not only farmers but also youth, students, industry and individuals. Harvel is a turnkey solutions provider in the agricultural irrigation and protected cultivation sector with over 30 years of unmatchable experience in serving 60,000 Indian farmers across the country with its Micro Irrigation and greenhouse solutions. Harvel PCD, the Protected Cultivation Division of Harvel has taken the lead in the greenhouse segment by accomplishing some of the best Indian projects in protected cultivation like Center of Excellence at IGKV, Raipur. This project is a Demonstration cum Technology Transfer Center where a vast range of horticulture crops like Tomatoes, Melons, Gladiolus are grown.

Harvel PCD is also going a step forward by penetrating at different levels to popularize the concept of protected cultivation to the masses. Harvel PCD’s offerings range from 160 sqm to 10 acres & above for growing fruits, vegetables, herbs for the following segments:a) Schools: Setting up small sized structures at educational institutes (schools/colleges).b) Hotels: Small/ Mid-sized structures for Hotels where they can grow all kinds of exotic vegetables like Coloured Capsicum, Cherry Tomato, Seedless Cucumber for their self-sustenance.

c) Central and State Governments: For demonstration and training purposes to farmers.

d) Personal Growers/ Hobby Farmers: People who love gardening and have a kitchen garden where they love to experiment with growing different types of popular crops.

e) Corporates: For producing high quality and disease-free fruits and vegetables/herbs for retail and export purposes. Corporate can also set up such structures for Corporate Social Responsibility.

Another flagship program of Harvel PCD is iGrowFresh (www.igrowfresh.com)which supplements all the above by buying back surplus produce from Harvel PCD’s Greenhouse clients.

The underlying theme behind promoting the multiple segments to a different set of target audience is to promote and popularize this concept which has boundless potential for uplifting Indian agriculture and in turn Indian economy.