Alappuzha: Lawyers tread the green path to success

ALAPPUZHA: When the lockdown rendered a group of young lawyers of Alappuzha district court jobless, they embraced farming. Now, after seven months, they are reaping the benefit of their hard work. The nine-member group, launched the ‘Lawyers’ Farm’ after much discussion and decided to undertake paddy farming.
They cultivated paddy in three acres and have gained a healthy profit out of it.Though the venture turned out to be a success, they said they did not know anything about farming and had just experimented on it out of necessity.
“Initially many had warned us against venturing into paddy farming without any prior experience. We have proved them wrong with our unity, hard work and passion. Anybody can become a farmer irrespective of their profession if they are ready to work hard. The harvesting of our paddy was completed on Sunday,” said Manoj George, the leader of the group.
It was George’s enthusiasm that encouraged the others in the group Abhilash C Soman, Manu V M, Nidheesh Pulimoottil, Aneesh Gopinathan, Harris T R, Shivasankar, Arun Krishnan and Rakesh Kammath to try their hand at farming.
“When the lockdown was declared, we became jobless and nine of us, all advocates, in our social media group discussed the possibility of finding an alternative job. It was George, who hails from Edathua in Kuttanad, suggested the idea of farming. Though we did not know the basics of farming, he told us that we would do it at any cost. Thus, we got into the shoes of the farmers and launched the ‘Lawyers’ Farm’,” said Nidheesh.
Arun Krishnan said that it was difficult to find a land suitable for farming. “ Though we first searched for land in Kuttanad, we couldn’t find one. Later, we got a barren land (karapadam -upland rice field) at Thaduthuveli under the Krishi Bhavan of Muhamma grama panchayat. We took three acres that had been lying barren for the past 20 years on lease for Rs 25,000. We started the land preparation works by April-end. The agriculture department gave us 200kg Uma seeds free of cost and the sowing was done on June 24. We reached the site every morning during the lockdown and worked till evening. All of us brought ‘pothichoru’ and had it together like traditional farmers,” said Krishnan.
George said they were also aided by the Subhiksha Keralam programme of the state government. “Even when the courts were reopened, we did not depend on any others for the field works. We did all the work by ourselves by reaching the field in the afternoon from the court. I have a goat farm and we mainly applied goat dung as manure. It gave us good yield. We could harvest 46.75 quintal of paddy and the profit was around Rs 80,000,” added George.
The success of their initial experiment has encouraged them to continue farming and now they are planning to start sesame and organic vegetable farming.