POINGUINIM: As a young child, Santosh Mahesh Komarpant, who came from a farmer family, chose to take white-collared work in the Public Works Department (PWD).
Some decades later, Komarpant, who is now 52 years old, can no longer see more and more land in his native Devbhag village, Canacona.
Now, his family of four not only reaches their own land, but has begun to cultivate empty land belonging to others in DevBhag too.
After growing rice for four hectares – or nearly 40,000 square meters – the land of the community with encouragement from the Ministry of Agriculture, Komarpant now motivates local youth to lend hands and return to agriculture.
“We have a small piece of land in the devbhag, but the main part of the land we fit is belonging to other farmers.
Increasing our morals is Zonal Kirtiraj’s agriculture officer, who speaks to other landowners to surrender their vacant land to us for cultivation,” said Komarpant.
He, Seema’s wife and two of their sons departed from home early in the morning to work hard in their fields.
They take turns to ensure that wild livestock does not trample on plants.
At night, they found themselves to expel wild animals, especially wild boar.
Rebuangunkar has convinced Komarpant’s assistance under the Ministry of Agriculture scheme to install sun fences to keep strays and wild animals in the bay.
The family has received subsidies to hijack, for mechanical farming machines and for purchasing chemical fertilizers.
“I have now talked to many local youth to bring 100 hectares of barren land under cultivation for the upcoming Rabbi season.
I have received a positive response,” Komarpant said.
When rice was almost ready to harvest, Komarpant looked forward to raising horticultural plants such as women’s fingers, bean clusters, brinjal, chili and watermelon during the rabbi season.
For the Kharif season, he has cultivated Jyoti and Karzat rice varieties.
“This land that we participated in was originally cultivated by the Gaonkar and Velip communities of Barcem, Gorongorim, Cabo-de-Rama and Gulem.
But they had to give up after landowners began to demand more rent, which they could not afford,” Komarpant said.
He admitted it was not an easy job of being a farmer, because he needed his family 90-95 days without sleep protecting rice plants from wild animals because they were ready to harvest.
“So the solar fence comes, my sons and I have to stay alert all night to protect plants from wild boar,” Komarpant said.