Bengaluru: Guru Prasad Pawar is living in Bijakwada, a small village in Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh. 

Today, he is a successful farmer. But the road to it was certainly not smooth. Pawar was good at his studies. After his graduation, he took up a course in Physical Training. After successful completion, he even got a job in 2004. But the salary which he used to earn was not sufficient enough to make ends meet. That is when he decided to start farming on the land he owns. 

He took a loan from banks and planted garlic. In 4 ½ months, the yield was good enough. You may find it difficult to believe, but in his land, he earns Rs 125 crores annually and makes roughly Rs 55 lakhs.

Guru says, “When I first benefited from the garlic crop, I bought 6 acres of land from it. Then I used to get agricultural land ranging from Rs 80 thousand to Rs 1 lakh rupees an acre. After this, I started buying a little land every year. Today I own 50 acres of agricultural land”.

Guru also practices crop diversification. He says, “I grow three crops a year in my fields and these are all cash crops. Initially we used to apply garlic in September-October, which was prepared in February-March. Soon after, they used to plant cabbage, after preparing the crop in May-June, they used to put sweet corn in the field. Cabbage and sweet corn crop are ready in 60-65 days. The same schedule continued after 2012, but then we started contract farming with PepsiCo and started growing potatoes in September-October instead of garlic. This contract farming is still ongoing”.

In this way, he earns good enough to take care of himself as well as his family. 

It would certainly not be an exaggeration to state that he is a role model for others to follow.