Meet Kerala man who doubled his income just by growing papaya

Papaya is the fruit that uninvitingly grows in your backyard and never gets its due recognition. But a 50-year-old man from Kannur in Kerala has smartly doubled his income by cultivating papaya and selling it in the local market.

Yusuf Chandroth from Mattanur realised the commercial potential of papaya when he found that it can be easily grown and has more nutritional benefits than other fruits.

Though Yusuf has been working as an office staff at the Government Higher Secondary School (GHSS) in Ulikkal, a job which he secured through the employment exchange, his passion for farming always made him explore different types of crops for cultivation.

Moreover, Yusuf values the time he spends on soil farming in his native place more than anyone else because his 12-year-long life in Bahrain, working as a salesman in a hardware shop, taught him a message that farming and providing quality food is the noblest way to serve mankind.

It was in 2021 that Yusuf first started to cultivate a variety of papaya called Red Lady. He took 20 cents of land from a friend on lease and started farming. “I am passionate about farming, and I do it without affecting my duty as an office staff of the school. I chose to grow papaya because of its commercial potential. Natural and fresh papayas are in high demand in the market. The advantage of cultivating these papayas is that they can be easily grown, and once harvested, they can be stored for ten days without getting spoiled,” he told “Open Digest.”

Yusuf gets up at 5 am every day and spends almost an hour in the farm attending to the crops. On holidays, he spends more time on the farm taking care of the crops.

“A single plant can yield about 25 papayas. From 20 cents of land, Yusuf gets about 50 kg of papaya in a single harvest, and they are sold in the local market,” he said.

In contrast to Indian papaya, which ripens from the outside to inward, the red lady papaya, native to Taiwan, has the distinctive feature of ripening from the inside to outward. Apart from papaya, Yusuf also cultivates other varieties of fruits like lemon, Asian palm, bananas, and guava on another 25 cents of land. He is supported by his wife Haseena P, 40, and their two children, Nazila P, 20, and Nihal P, 15.