सिंहदरबार संवाददाता
Myagdi. A young man who returned from studying in the US for 10 years in Satbise, Mangala Rural Municipality-3, has started commercial banana farming. Sushil Khadka, 38, who currently lives in Baglung and does business in Kathmandu, has started banana farming to utilize his ancestral land in his birthplace.
He said that he is trying to utilize the barren cultivable land through banana farming through Mangala Venture Company and also to give a message that there are income and employment opportunities in the villages through agricultural enterprises. “Many people made fun of me when I planted bananas two years ago when the fertile land in Satbise, which our ancestors bought for rice cultivation two hundred years ago, became barren due to migration and foreign employment,” said Khadka. “I am happy that others have started learning from the banana plantation that I started so that the land would not become barren.”
Sushil, who holds a master’s degree in economics and business and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Vanderbilt University in the US, has run a company in Kathmandu that processes and reuses non-biodegradable waste with his wife Silsila. Khadka has 100 ropanis of ancestral land in Satbise. Sushil’s great-grandfather had come from Baglung and purchased land in Satbise two hundred years ago. Legend has it that this place was named Satbise because it was bought for seven rupees. Khadka’s ancestors bought land in Satbise because it was a place where rice is grown, which smells delicious when it is cooked in the field and in the kitchen, and because it has irrigation facilities.
Recently, due to the lack of agricultural laborers due to foreign employment and the increasing cost, the cultivable land in Satbise has also become barren and has started turning into bushes. He went to America to study in 2005. Sushil came to Nepal in 2015. During the lockdown due to the spread of the Corona epidemic, he had the idea of running an agricultural enterprise on his ancestral land. Khadka, who started the enterprise with 150 plants of the Hazari variety of banana in three ropanis, has recently expanded it by planting new banana plants in one ropani. He said that after the successful trial of banana farming, he started expanding it.
Sushil said that his mother Mankumari helped him in maintaining the banana garden. Khadka, who has earned 100,000 rupees in the last one year by selling bananas, is preparing to cultivate dragon fruit along with banana farming. He plans to continue the indigenous Gauriya rice cultivation at low cost using modern equipment and to form a group of unemployed youth who have returned from abroad and are in the village to run an agricultural enterprise. ‘My aim is to give the message that something can be done in the country and to protect and promote traditional crops,’ said Khadka. ‘It is our duty and responsibility to protect traditional crops that have the ability to cope with changes in climate and weather.’
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