Mustang. Farmer Khem Bahadur Shahi has used the apple farming skills he learned in India in the upper grasslands of Thasang Rural Municipality-4 in the Himalayan Mustang by establishing an apple nursery in Mustang.
He has been producing apple seedlings for the past two years by renting about 14 ropanis of land and registering ‘KB Shahi Foods and Forever Nursery Farm’. The 44-year-old Shahi has made an effort to revive the skills he learned as a laborer on an apple farm in India for more than two and a half decades in the fertile land of Mustang.
KB Shahi (Khem Bahadur) is a resident of Jajarkot Rural Municipality-2. Shahi ran away from his family at the young age of 14 while studying in the 9th grade and reached Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. Shahi, who reached India to earn money due to his family’s weak financial condition, worked in an apple farm in Shimla, India for more than 25 years.
Shahi says that after losing hope after his family did not return after a long time, he returned home when the world was hit by COVID-19 (coronavirus) and after working in an apple orchard for a few years, he has been farming apples in the grasslands of Mustang for about two years. Stating that he has expanded the nursery and apple farming to an altitude of about two thousand meters above sea level, he mentioned that there has been no progress except learning work and earning a living in India.
Shahi informed that he finally reached Mustang, known as the apple capital, and started an apple nursery with the idea of doing some productive work. He said that he sold five thousand plants from the apple nursery in the initial year.
Shahi said that he has reached various municipalities in the district for apple farming and nursery and met directly with the people’s representatives, locals and farmers there and provided necessary training. He shared his experience of training farmers on advanced and local varieties of apples in a six-month training conducted by Gharpajhong Rural Municipality of Mustang two years ago.
Currently, Shahi informed that he is selling Red Delicious, Royal Delicious, Richa Red Delicious and Golden Delicious as well as Italian Gala, Fuji and Kingrod varieties at Rs 300 to Rs 900 per plant. He said that the three hundred plants planted on the farm are ready to produce.
‘Many had given up hope of growing apples in the grasslands bordering the neighboring district of Myagdi. When we started the nursery two years ago, it was painful to give negative feedback because it was local and concerned,’ he said, ‘now farmers from within and outside Mustang come to the farm to get seedlings.’
According to Shahi, the goal is to produce five times as many apple seedlings in the meadows within the next five years, provide necessary skills to locals, take domestic and foreign tourists visiting Mustang to the garden, and sell ripe apples from the garden. According to the Temperate Horticulture Development Center Marfa Mustang, apples are produced here at an altitude of 1,900 meters to 3,600 meters above sea level.
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