Tribal women in Jharkhand have turned to non-traditional cultivation of Aloe Vera, a kind of medicinal plant, which has brought them a substantial amount of profit.
Residents from Deori village in Jharkhand’s Ranchi district switched over to this unconventional farming in 2018 after being informed about its attractive returns by the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) scientists. They also provided 6,000 saplings to the villagers free of cost to start with the farming.
Two years on, the village has got the tag of ‘Aloe Vera village’ because of the huge produce. The village produces some 50kg of aloe vera leaves per day.
Every villager from Deori is engaged in the cultivation, setting aside traditional farming which not only required much attention but also a lot of investment. Each farmer is earning around Rs10,000 a month on the produce. What is interesting about this farming is that a majority of the farmers engaged in its cultivation are women.
“We were imparted training about aloe vera cultivation by the local agriculture scientists in 2018 but we didn’t show much interest in it. We gave more attention towards it following an alarming rise in its demand due to some rumors about the immunity boosting by consumption of aloe vera juice during COVID-19,” said village chief and farmer Manju Kashap.
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