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Need/Problem
The
demand for high quality planting material is steadily
increasing due to interest in vegetable production,
fruit-tree cultivation, social forestry, agro-forestry
and plantation crops, floriculture, etc. Demand
from homestead gardens and for indoor plants has
also been growing in urban areas. The need for setting
up rural nurseries to meet these demands of local
people has been felt by small and marginal farmers
as well as by gardeners and farmhouse owners who
either have no or poor access to such quality planting
material or have otherwise to rely on expensive
supply from non-local sources. In order to meet
this demand, there is ample scope for introduction
of small rural nurseries, which will serve to augment
the incomes of poorer sections of rural society
while boosting quality and productivity in the farms
sector. Such rural nurseries would also provide
useful extension mechanisms for introduction of
new or better varieties of different crops and as
forward linkages for specially produced material
such as from tissue-culture units.
Approach/Strategy
The nursery business is highly remunerative and
can be conducted in small space with minimum investment,
making it highly suitable for adoption by small/marginal
farmers. 1 sq.m. of space can easily accommodate
about 200 saplings in plastic bags. In the case
of ornamentals and grafted plants at an average
selling price of about Rs. 10 a gross annual income
of Rs. 2000/sq.m. is quite feasible. A nursery business
can be undertaken by a village women in her spare
time, using very little space and inputs. The nature
of the nursery can vary according to the needs of
the locality. A nursery in the vicinity of urban
areas may produce mainly ornamental plants, indoor/garden
plants, avenue tress and trees with showy flowers,
while in rural areas a nursery may make more money
through supply of grafts of fruit trees, rooted
cuttings and saplings of medicinal and aromatic
plants and of trees yielding non-timber products,
seedlings of timber and fuel-wood trees, trees required
in social/commercial forestry, etc.
The scope of a rural nursery can be successfully
expanded by including seedlings of seasonal crop
species. These could include not only several species
of vegetables, but also such crop species as papaya,
banana, sugarcane, cotton, castor, arhar and even
cereals like rice, jowar and bajra. In the case
of all these crops, seedlings are produced in nursery
even if the conditions improve. With availability
of such planting material from local nurseries,
farmers can effectively pre-pone dates of planting
with a proportionate increase in yield or, alternatively,
delay the date of planting without suffering any
yield loss. For the farmer, this can be a valuable
eco-friendly non-monetary input, which gives higher
yield without having to use additional agro-chemicals.
The
business potential of selling seedlings of seasonal
crops is estimated at Rs. 5000 crores per year on
all India basis. Because it is difficult to transport
live plants over long distances from large-scale
centralized facilities, small decentralized rural
nurseries have a natural advantage. Rural areas
can potentially have lakhs of nurseries within a
few kilometers of each other, each catering to a
cluster of villages without having to compete among
themselves.
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