Kerala farmer turns to wild ginger, earns lakhs with minimum investment

If you want to be a successful farmer, you need to be innovative and competitive. This farmer from Idukki in Kerala is showing how to stay relevant in the market and earn lakhs by cultivating a native crop which people forgot while chasing new varieties of crops.

Being a conventional rubber farmer, M V Radhakrishnan, 53, of Moolamattom always faced financial instability when the price of rubber repeatedly fell. He realized that he should find a solution to stay financially afloat by farming a crop which could consistently fetch him good returns without investing much. After years of research, he zeroed in on wild ginger, a native crop which grew abundantly in the hilly regions of Idukki but lost its sheen after people went after hybrid varieties of other crops.

“I spoke with several old farmers who knew about wild ginger. I learned about the ways to grow it without using any chemical fertilizers. As wild gingers are native crops, they have their own capacity to resist pest attacks and diseases,” Radhakrishnan told “Open Digest.”

Four years back, when Radhakrishnan started farming wild ginger on his three acres of land, he wasn’t sure how his plan would turn out. But now, Radhakrishnan has extended wild ginger farming to eight acres of land after he could make good returns from his three-acre farmland.

“You don’t need expensive fertilisers to farm wild ginger. What you need is cow dung and ash. There is huge demand for wild ginger because of its medicinal properties. Moreover, pharma companies are buying it in bulk if we can offer wild ginger after naturally drying it up in hot sun,” he said.

Another attractive point of wild ginger farming is that once planted, it doesn’t require as much care compared to other crops. “You need to water only once a week. Also, the saplings that grew during the first round of cultivation are all enough to do the cropping for the next round of planting after three years,” he added.

Radhakrishnan produces over three tonnes of wild ginger in each season, and he sells both raw and dried wild gingers to bulk buyers right from Gujarat to Tamil Nadu. While raw ginger is sold at a rate of Rs 35 to 40 per kilogram, the dried ginger fetches Rs 130 to Rs 140 per kilogram.