Lately, the cultivation of lavender has made the Jammu and Kashmir farmers quit maize crop cultivation and is helping them earn heavily. More than 800 progressive farmers of Doda adopted aromatic cultivation which is now proved out to be more profitable to them than maize.
Quitting the age-old farming of maize crops, 800 progressive farmers residing in the hilly slopes of Jammu and Kashmir’s Doda have successfully adopted aromatic lavender cultivation that is comparatively more profitable, hence, kicking off a “purple revolution” in the district.
The farmers, who are growing lavender under the Union Government’s Aroma Mission, said that they are happy while adopting farming of unconventional aromatic plants under Aroma Mission which is an initiative of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with a thought to increase the income of small and marginal farmers with a primary focus of research on drug discovery from natural products, to popularise aromatic crops and provide value-addition solutions to farmers across the country.
Lavender, a native crop of Europe, was introduced by the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine in the temperate regions of the Jammu division under CSIR-Aroma Mission in 2017.
Small and marginal farmers of Bhadarwah region of Doda district quickly took this initiative in hand while finding suitable cold climate and favorable growing conditions, and started cultivating lavender in their fields at several villages including Tapri, Lehrote, Killar, Koundla, Himote, Sartingal, Butla, Nalthi, and Nakshari.
“We have distributed 8 lakh (quality planting material ) rooted plants of lavender to more than 500 farmers in an order to start this aroma mission massively. Farmers were provided with free plants and they had planted this crop in 100 acres of land of Jammu,” said Sumeet Gairola, Senior Scientist, CSIR- IIIM Jammu.
“We not only had given them technical support but free essential oil distillation facilities were also provided to the farmers of Bhadarwah and through CSIR-IIIM, they have produced more than 800 litres of lavender oil worth Rs 80 lakh from 2018 to 2020,” he added.