Chhattisgarh: Green chillis bloom in Bastar district's red corridors

Growing demand and better returns force farmers to cultivate chillis

The farmers in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, once synonymous with Maoist-orchestrated bloodbaths and police encounters with guerrillas, are witnessing a green revolution in the pockets that were identified as “red zones" in the past.

Traditional farming in the district has paved the way for spice crops and farmers, after seeing the growing demand and better returns, have come out in a big way to cultivate chilli crops in the areas that were not so long ago considered perilous.

“Over 150 farmers in Bastar have opted to cultivate chillis and are selling about 2,500 tonnes of green chillies yearly,” said a Jagdalpur-based senior official in the horticulture department.

Farmers in Bastar are now taking interest in horticulture and forestry along with traditional farming as it creates additional earning sources and increases their income, the official said.

“The department has geared up to encourage the farmers and is preparing 600,000 saplings every month from an improved variety of chilli seeds in a government nursery in Asana,” the official said.

The department also plans to set up another chilli seedling centre in the Asana nursery after receiving an overwhelming response from the farmers, the official said, adding that the new centre will produce an additional 500,000 saplings every month.

The chilli-producing farmers of Bhirlinga village said they were harvesting about 40 tonnes of chilli in two and a half acres of land following the use of advanced techniques.

These techniques save water and fertiliser costs. Many farmers are taking the hybrid variety of chilli, which has a high market price tag and is high in demand, besides having an extra shelf life.

The farmers said it could be some quirk of fate that they are sending their produce to markets in Andhra Pradesh that once used to feed the entire Bastar region.

Chillis are widely used in many cuisines. Besides Andhra Pradesh, chilli-growing farmers in Bastar are also meeting the demand in the prominent cities of Chhattisgarh including Raipur, Bhilai, and Bilaspur.

Agriculture scientists said the agro-climatic condition in Bastar is favourable for chilli cultivation.

The farmers are also using advanced technology that includes fertigation, a method of fertiliser application in which fertiliser is incorporated within the irrigation system.

In this system, the fertiliser solution is distributed evenly during irrigation. Since the availability of nutrients is very high, the efficiency is higher.