Yadwinder Singh hails from Chogawan Sadhpur village, about 20 km from Amritsar, Punjab, India. His father, Karamjit Singh, worked in the Punjab’s Education Department. But he had a great love for agriculture and used to frequently visit the Punjab Agricultural University. Farmers fair was held every year in the university and Yadwinder always accompanied his father to the fair. Due to this, Yadwinder also got a special kind of attachment to agriculture from childhood.
However, after growing up, Yadwinder earned many degrees and tried hard for a government job. But seeing no hope, he chose the path of farming and in the last 14 years, he has made a special identity in the area. He wanted to try something new in agriculture. He believes that if the farmer works sincerely in his fields and adopts new technologies, then new feats can be accomplished. Yadwinder currently owns 8 acres of land and instead of growing traditional crops, he is growing organic turmeric.
He started an outlet named ‘Majha Foods’ to sell his products. Though his outlet is quite small, the scope of it is growing in countries like America, Italy, Canada, Australia. Yadwinder’s father was doing agriculture as well as doing a job. Then Yadwinder expressed his desire to take up farming, he was overjoyed and suggested to his son that if farming is to be made profitable, then something different has to be done.
After this, he started to gain knowledge and collect information from the Internet. At a farmers’ fair in the Punjab Agricultural University, he came to know about turmeric. At that time turmeric was not being cultivated professionally in Punjab, India. Nevertheless, he started cultivating it on 3 acres of land. The first harvest was of great quality and they did not face any problem in selling it. Yadwinder had spent around Rs 1.5 lakh in the initial year and earned an income of Rs 3 lakh. He started cultivating turmeric on all his 8 acres of land.
The second time they got better yields. But they were having a lot of trouble selling it. He felt that his product might just be wasted. But then he got the idea that why not preserve and process it, so that the risk is less and the benefit is more. With this thought in mind, Yadwinder set up a turmeric processing unit and started making pickles and powders from it.
He adopts organic matter instead of chemicals to cultivate turmeric. He uses cow dung and stubble for turmeric cultivation. Yadwinder has adopted a drip irrigation system for irrigation, which saves almost half of the water. To reduce the dependence on government electricity and do sustainable farming, he has also installed solar panels in his farm. He has given employment to needy people of the village to handle his work. Yadwinder’s success is inspiring youth of the village to take up farming.