Hyderabad: The Cherlapally Open Air Jail has been growing 100 per cent organic vegetables and fruits at its farms since 2013.
The initiative, which was taken by then-superintendent of the prison K.V. Reddy who is postd at Cherlapally central prison, trained the prisoners in organic farming. He studied this technique during a training session in Jharkhand and introduced it in the open-air jail with the help of horticulturists and a few farmers.
Now the jail is farming organic vegetables like tomato, brinjal, lady fingers, cucumber, bottle gourd, snake gourd, field beans, pickle mangoes and fruits like varieties of mangoes like Banagan-apalle and Totapuri and papaya.
Telangana prisons’ in-charge IG Akula Narasimha said cultivation was going on over 20 acres. “We don’t use any pesticides and are manufacturing vermicompost at our own plant at the open air jail. We have a large dairy farm and we use cow dung for the vermicompost.”
He said the compost was not used till the 90-day process was complete. “We are selling the compost to others. Vegetable output from the open air jail is being sent to Central Prison’s canteen and the inmates are getting organic food,” he said.
