Watermelon Project in Bihar

The second meeting of APNA MUTUAL AID was held on 12 November. In the meeting, imbibing the concept of mutual cooperation, a serious discussion was held on starting a new project to support the members financially.

In this meeting it was decided to include three new members in the group. These are the three: Mevalal Singh (male, 60 years), Mustaq Ansari (male, 45 years), Naseem Ali (male, 35 years).

One of them hails from Dalit community and the other two are from minority community. The three are farmers and do watermelon farming by taking the land of the river on rent.

In the meeting, for the betterment of the members and their families, it was decided watermelon cultivation will be done on a large scale with the help of mutual cooperation and HGC.

Khaira Asha village is on the banks of river Gandak. The river remains full of water during the rainy season and floods occur almost every year. There is devastation all around and there is no crop in this time period. But as soon as the winter season starts, the stomach of the river becomes empty and sand starts appearing on lakhs of acres of land. The situation remains like this every year from November to June. Hundreds of people living on the banks of the river on this empty sand land cultivate watermelon by taking land on rent from the landlords, which is economically very fruitful for the local people. This sequence continues till the summer season for about six months.

Following the suggestion of trained farmers, the members collected Rs 20000/ with mutual cooperation and have rented three acres of sand land to cultivate watermelon.

How much will it cost?

Watermelon is cultivated by digging pits and applying timely compost and seeds in it. The women members of the group persuaded the male members of their household to dig pits. In the last eight days ten people prepared 2000 pits for sowing watermelons on three acres of land. The cost of planting watermelon in one pit will be around Rs.100. According to this, sowing watermelons in two thousand pits will cost a total of Rs.200000 in the next fifteen days.

How much income?

Watermelons of five kg to ten kg will be produced from a pit after four months for a minimum of three hundred rupees. The production process will continue till the peak summer season till June next year, when the demand for watermelons remains high across the country.

In this way, if the weather is fine, there will be a sale of at least four and a half lakh rupees and a maximum of six lakh rupees from two thousand pits. As a conclusion, the possibility of making a profit of two and a half to three and a half lakh rupees within six months cannot be ruled out.

A proposal to distribute this profit equally among the ten members of the group has been passed in the meeting. Two thousand pits ready, waiting for compost seed.

As mentioned above, after working hard for eight days after the meeting, the members prepared two thousand pits for sowing watermelons. If the assistance of $1500-$2000 is provided on time by HGC, then not only the economic condition of the group members will improve, but proper arrangements for the education and medical treatment of hundreds of their children can also be made. Now the group members look forward to the help and guidance of the HGC.

HGC provided $1800 for this project, which was very successful.