Farmers take to ultra-high density cashew farming

Deranna Rai, a farmer from Bettampady village in Puttur taluk, said was planning to plant rubber on a five-acre land in his village in 2010. The earth moving equipment had prepared four acres of land for this purpose.

Then he met scientists from the Directorate. They persuaded him to take up ultra-high density cashew planting in the remaining one acre.

Accepting the suggestion, he planted around 440 cashew plants on an acre of land that year. (In the ultra-high density method, 440 plants are planted with a spacing of 3 metres x 3 metres on an acre of land. In the traditional system, 60-65 plants are planted on an acre of land, and the harvesting starts from the third year in this system.)

In the first year, Rai got around 0.75 kg of raw cashew nuts a tree amounting to 330 kg an acre. After three years of planting, he harvested around 2 kg of raw cashew nuts a tree, amounting to around 800 kg from an acre of plantation. “After deducting all the expenses, my net profit is ₹40,000 from cashew alone this year,” he said, adding that now he feels he should have planted cashew in the remaining land then.

Deranna Rai is among three farmers, including a woman, who heed to the suggestions of the scientists to take up ultra-high density and high density cashew farming a few years ago. Today they are happy as they get good productivity from their farms.

The success stories were narrated at a farmers’ meet organised by the Puttur-based Directorate of Cashew Research as part of its Foundation Day on Wednesday.

Satyabhama , the successful woman from Manchi village of Bantwal taluk in Dakshina Kannada district, said she followed ultra-high density planting with 440 plants on an acre of land three years ago. She got around one kg a tree from the second year of planting itself. Now she is harvesting around 1,100 kg of raw cashew nuts. Satyabhama uses cow dung in her plantation.

Vittappa, a farmer from Honnali taluk of Davangere district, said that he took up high-density cashew planting with a spacing of 5 metres x 5 metres on 1.25 hectares of land in 2004. Around 500 plants were planted then, and the fruit-bearing started in 2006.

He said that yield has gradually increased from 1 kg of raw cashew nuts a tree to 9 kg a tree since then.

In 2014, he got a profit of ₹720 a tree at the rate of ₹80 a kg for raw cashew nuts. After deducting all expenses, he earned a profit of ₹2 lakh a hectare, he added.

PL Saroj, Director of Directorate of Cashew Research, said that there is good scope for ultra-high density cashew farming as the domestic demand for cashew nut exceeds the production.

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