By Our Correspondent
Damauli, Dec. 5: Oranges worth around Rs. 10.2 million were sold from a single plot of orange garden of Khanigaun of Magde Rural Municipality-2, Tanahun district, this year.
Farmers of Jamune, including Bisho Bahadur Adhikari, Suknarayan Shrestha and Ram Bahadur Thapa earned a handsome income by selling oranges grown in a single plot of a slope.
Adhikari, former president of District Development Committee, sold oranges worth Rs. 4 million this year. He has around 600 orange trees in his garden.
Likewise, Shrestha received Rs. 5 million from the sale of oranges grown in 700 trees of his farm. Shrestha is the former president of Village Development Committee of Jamune.
Similarly, local Ram Bahadur Thapa earned Rs. 1.2 million from the sale of oranges grown in 350 orange trees of his garden. Thapa was retired Agricultural Officer of the District Development Office.
They are earning handsome income from the sale of oranges for the last couple of years.
Adhikari said that he would expand the orange farm a he was encouraged from the profit he was making from the sale of oranges.
Shrestha said that the economic prosperity was not far if all people focused on the commercial farming of fruit and other agricultural crops.
Thapa said that traders from Kathmandu arrived in their farm to collect oranges themselves.
“As orange is the cash fruit, the traders give money to the farmers looking yield of trees before the arrival of the harvesting season,” he said.
Khanigaun is the pocket area of orange. Many farmers of the village have engaged in orange farming.
Chief of Agriculture Knowledge Centre Tanahun Kul Prasad Tiwari said that the centre was ready to provide required training and support for the farmers.
He urged the farmers to plant orange trees in their plot of their land.
Tiwari said that the famers would be able to sell oranges at higher cost than the present price if they managed to sell the orange in the off-season by keeping them in cold store.