Two friends from Shopian district, Jammu & Kashmir is making a fortune from mushroom and vegetable farming, using organic methods to grow rare and medicinally valuable vegetables on their own property.
Jahangir Ahmad Malik, 40, and his companion Umar Yasin, 35, both residents of Shopian's Nadigam village, began producing vegetables in addition to tending to their apple orchards by the end of 2020.
Malik, who owns 30 kanals of horticultural land, said they came up with the concept since they thought that vegetable cultivation in the region had practically wiped off due to the district's massive increase in fruit production.
"We first started cultivating certain vegetables using organic techniques, and the agriculture department provided us with vegetable seeds," Malik explained.
Malik, who lives separately from his other brothers, claims to be a science graduate, although his spouse holds a master's degree.
Malik's partner, Umar Yasin, stated that they cultivate broccoli, cherry tomatoes, melons, sweet corn, red cabbage, and other medicinally beneficial vegetables and mushrooms.
One of their primary goals, he claimed, was to cultivate organic vegetables because most of the ones sold in the market were grown with a lot of fertilizers and insecticides.
"We guarantee consumers that we grow the vegetables on a separate patch of land with organic inputs on most of our product," he added, adding that some of the vegetables are grown in the soil between high-density apple trees.
Malik stated he had a dairy farm in addition to his vegetable and mushroom business. "We produce worm compost out of the manure from the dairy farm and use it for vegetables, and we sell part of the compost at the market," he stated.
Both friends claimed that because they advertise on social media, they get a lot of customers at their doorsteps. "We receive clients at our doorstep since organic vegetables are unusual. Some patients come to us to obtain one or more vegetables for medical purposes. We've been allocated a location near the small secretariat at the Shopian Mandi to sell our vegetables, seedlings, and mushrooms," Yasin explained.
Despite the fact that this is their first year in the field, Malik claims that they have already made a profit of Rs.5 lakh.
The vegetables are cultivated on their own property, while the mushrooms are grown in a dark chamber outside Malik's home.
