Thiruvananthapuram: Cracks surface in roof-top farming

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It sounds cool to have a roof-top farm these days due to government propaganda encouraging it, but the cost of paraphernalia has increased and the seeds do not satisfy the requirements of city dwellers. Kerala Irrigation Infrastructural Development Corporation (KIIDC) has stopped giving subsidies to items  like sprinklers, grow bags and biogas plant. Also the yield from seeds available commonly in the city is less likely to match those veggies available in the market.

“I had purchased the seeds through the vending machine at collectorate. The lady’s finger I harvested was hard to chew and amaranth was tasteless, so I stopped using it,” said Girija Kumar of Thirumala. The Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Cou-ncil Keralam (VFPCK) that grows seeds said that it only grows varieties that can thrive in non-commercial farms. “For instance, we grow only a breed of amaranth called arun. Seed growers cultivate it in our facility at Palakkad just to take out seeds,” said a VFPCK official. VFPCK had this year distributed around three lakh seed packets in the capital. Around 35 lakh seed packets were sold in the  state.

A provider of biogas plant said that the KIIDC  was yet to resume subsidies that were withdrawn before the Assembly elections. “Today, a low-end biogas plant that can convert two kg of waste into slurry costs Rs 18,500 after Central subsidies. Grow bags and sprinkler cost another Rs 10,000. All of this was available for Rs 10,000 last year,” the dealer said. Last year, the scheme had found over 1,500 beneficiaries in Thiruvananthapuram alone and several government employees took on to roof-top vegetable farming. The officials of KIIDC said that they stopped giving subsidies as an administrative sanction  to resume it has not come in this regard.