Many communities in Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara region have established their own identities by cultivating sweet corn, proving that agriculture can be a viable business. These villages are known as the ‘Sweet Corn’ Villages.
Chhindwara is a district where maize is farmed on an area of around three lakh hectares, but in the last seven and a half years, the farmers have chosen to cultivate sweet corn, which has drastically changed their life.
According to Jitendra Kumar Singh, Deputy Director of Agriculture, around 500 farmers from 10 villages in the Umreth region of the Parasia block are planting sweet corn on 1,000 hectares. These are forward-thinking farmers who make a solid living by growing three crops in a year: potato, watermelon, and sweet corn.
Bijakwara is one of the villages that have established itself as a ‘Sweet Corn’ community. In this village, a huge number of farmers grew local maize; their earnings were low, and they frequently suffered large losses due to weather.
They have not only improved their farming over the last decade, but they have also increased their revenue. At the moment, 36 farmers in Bijakwara are producing sweet corn on 160 hectares of land; their crop is expanding not only in Madhya Pradesh, but also in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh.
This year these farmers produced about 2400 metric tonnes of sweet corn, which has earned them an income of Rs 3.60 crores.
Farmers of many nearby villages have also started cultivating sweet corn. The cultivation of sweet corn has also brought a ‘big change’ in the lives of many farmers
For the cultivation of sweet corn, many took training and gradually adopted it and is cultivating sweet corn, making a net profit. Farmers in many villages of Chhindwara are getting attracted towards the sweet corn as apart from increasing their income, it is also changing their lifestyle.
