MLA Nilesh Cabral Drives Home Farming In Curchorem: 200 Families Get On the Bandwagon Growing Veggies

Panaji, Goa: Situated nearly 50 to 54 kms away from the capital city, this mining town in South Goa on the banks of the Zuari river, with a population of around 30,000 to 40,000 people (including a floating population of migrants) is showing the way for the rest of the coastal state. And one cannot but forget to mention the driving force behind this initiative – the local MLA Nilesh Cabral who leads from the front.

Under the guidance and motivation of Curchorem MLA Nilesh Cabral, more than 200 families in the constituency have started a unique drive to promote horticulture and home or garden cultivation of fruits and vegetables and other related-farming activity in the area.

The campaign is led by a group of individuals under the banner of Goemcho Goenkar (literally meaning Goans of Goa), and aims for a 30 to 40 percent increase in overall farming activity and farm produce in the area over the next 12 months.

If all goes well, in the coming six to eight months, the Curchorem area will be the leading zone, suppling organic, home-grown, fresh vegetables to the State of Goa, which has to currently import vegetables from Maharashtra and Karnataka.

We are also toying with the concept of growing chilies, but experts and agriculture scientists have not yet given us a thumbs up for this area, said Albert, a resident of Curchorem and an enthusiastic home farmer.

“Cabral has whole-heartedly supported the Kitchen Farming initiative in his constituency. In spite of the massive second wave which hit Goa like a sledge hammer in May, we have started the initiative in June, once the first drops of rainfall hit the coastal state,” says Brendon Fernandes, the Curchorem co-ordinator for Goemcho Goenkar.

Fernandes says their plan was to start in March, but the warm and dry weather was not conducive to garden farming and we had to abort our plans. Making arrangements for additional water required by individual families for the farming initiative was not possible during the dry months. Then Covid hit in May and we were able to only start by mid-June. Some families had started in the first week of June itself, but others began by mid-June. We now have nearly 200 families involved in kitchen farming in Curchorem,” Fernandes explains.

“We wanted to enlist around 300 families, but the second Covid wave in Goa left many families in grief, having lost either a member or a relative. We were able to finally rope in about 200 families to join us,” he says proudly.

Fruits and vegetables which can be easily grown in the soil available in Curchorem are given priority over other food or farm items which cannot grow in the naturally available soil.

An initial survey in January this year, indicated that the outskirts of the town may also be suitable for poultry farming, which needs to be explored.

Goemcho Goenkar provides the home farmers, kitchen gardeners and horticulture farmers with organic fertilizer, saplings, seeds and other farming tools, implements and expertise in the form of training sessions, to motivate more and more people to take up home farming in Curchorem.

We want to popularize the concept of organic kitchen gardening or kitchen farming and expect hundreds of families to take up kitchen gardening and growing fruits and vegetables in their backyards.

Organic and fresh are two sacred words that not only appeal to fitness freaks, but also to every health-conscious person. Many people splurge on imported, advertised ‘natural’ products, when some of the best sources of a healthy diet can be grown and produced in one’s backyard, says Fernandes who is associated with the project, since its inception in December last year.