Shanthi quit her lucrative job in the U.S. and returned to Tirupur a few years ago to start agriculture

K. Shanthi (34), who worked as a software engineer in the United States, decided she wanted to return to her roots and her agrarian background. “Even though I was working as a software engineer, in my heart I knew I would go back to agriculture, sooner than later, “ she said. She quit her lucrative job and returned to Tirupur a few years ago to start agriculture on a 12-acre land she inherited on the outskirts of the city.

Ms. Shanthi decided to go in for organic farming and inter-cropping in order to get maximum unit value realisation (UVR) from her land.

Presently, she is raising around 1,000 coconut trees and uses the space between them to grow vegetables and fruits such as bananas, sapota, mango and papaya.

“I am raising different varieties of coconut to have a sustainable return. The dwarf variety is mainly grown to be sold as tender coconut while the other varieties are grown to produce copra when the income from tender coconut diminishes after the summer”, explained Ms. Shanthi.

Ms. Shanthi is now planning to come out with value-added products from the agriculture produce from her land.

“I have joined a consortium of organic farmers and we hope we can market the value-added products effectively by identifying sustainable market linkages,” she said.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Tamil Nadu / by R. Vimal Kumar / Tirupur – September 02nd, 2015