Shopian: A young Shopian duo is making a fortune out of mushroom and vegetable farming by growing rare and medically beneficial vegetables on their own land, that too with organic methods.
By the end of year 2020, Jahangir Ahmad Malik, 40, and his friend Umar Yasin, 35, both residents of Nadigam village of Shopian, started growing vegetables besides tending to their apple orchards.
Malik, who has 30 kanals of horticultural land, said that they got this idea because they felt that vegetable growing in the area had almost ended since the huge boost in fruit growing in the district.
“We first started growing some vegetables with organic methods and those vegetable seeds were provided by the agriculture department,” Malik said.
Malik, who lives separately from his other brothers, said that he is a science graduate while his partner has a masters degree.
Umar Yasin, Malik’s partner, said that they grow broccoli, cherry tomato, melons, sweet corn, red cabbage, besides other medically rich vegetables and mushroom.
He said that one of their prime motive was to grow organic vegetables as most of the ones sold in the markets were being grown by heavy use of fertilisers and insecticides.
“We guarantee people on most of our produce that we grow the vegetables on a separate patch of land with organic inputs,” he said, adding that they also grow some of the vegetables in the soil between high-density apple trees.
Malik said that besides the vegetable and mushroom business, he also has a dairy farm. “We use the manure from the dairy farm to make worm compost and use it for vegetables, and sell some of the compost in the market,” he said.
Both friends said that they get a lot of customers at their doorstep as they use social media for advertising. “As organic vegetables are rare, we get customers at our doorstep. Some patients also come to us to get one or the other vegetable for its medicinal benefits. We have been given a space at the Shopian Mandi near the mini secretariat for sale of our vegetables, seedlings and mushroom,” Yasin said.
Malik said that even though this is their first year in the field, but they have already earned about Rs 5 lakh from this business.
The duo use their own land to grow the vegetables while the mushrooms are grown in a dark room outside Malik’s house.

Raashid Hassan