KARAMJEET KAUR DANEWALIA ACHIEVING SUCCESS THROUGH HORTICULTURE BY MAKING HER OWN IDENTITY IN THE FIELD OF FARMING

I am Karamjeet Kaur Danewalia from Danewala Satkosi Village, Abohar. As I was from a farming background and my father was a farmer, I was interested in farming from the beginning, but I never got a chance to do it. After few years of my marriage, in 1975, with the support of my husband (Mr Jasbeer Singh) I started orchard farming in 45 acres of land. I planted kinnow on 20 acres, Plums, pear, peach, java plum, banana, naak pears on 10 acres and in the rest of the 5 acres I planted wheat and cotton.

Soon I started earning good profit from it and I changed my passion towards farming into fulltime profession. In 1990 I build up a pond and stored rain water in it to irrigate my orchards. But later on I also started fish farming in it. I expanded my business slowly and started preparing seedlings also.

In 2001 I created a world record of 132.2 tonnes of kinnow in one hectare. In 2003 I went to California to take kinnow packaging and processing training. That training helped me a lot and in my business. And in 2004 I was entitled as Kinnow Queen by Parkash Singh Badal. I treat my trees and plants as my children and raise them lovingly. And even today also I give 10 hours daily to my orchards and that is the reason my kinnow quality are best in the whole Punjab.

Today I am harvesting 130 ton of kinnows per hectare and return of investment is also good. Behind my success and all the awards and achievements, my husband is the person who supported me the most and acted as a backbone through all these years. My future plan is to make agriculture a more profitable commercial business and make aware more farmers about the profit in horticulture.