Towseefa Rizwi, a woman entrepreneur in the Shalhar village of Bandipora district in north Kashmir, compares herself with the women working in the government sector, and finds one big difference –– “I am independent,” she says.
Rizwi is the owner of Kashmir Valley Agro Industry (KVAI) where her husband Parvez works as a production manager.
Kashmir Valley, with its abundant resources – especially vast tracts of horticultural land, has a great potential for beekeeping and exporting honey to different Indian states.
Apiary business has also given rise to successful processing units.
According to Rizwi, the entire area has been known for keeping at least one or two beehives which are mostly traditional Kashmiri beehives.
Rizwi refused to share the details about the annual revenue, but she said that she is making a respectable income from the honey business.
Bhat told VillageSquare.in,“Though I lost a few of them to harsh weather in April this year, I feel I am getting a lot of financial benefits. For example, I got a profit of Rs 20,000 this year.”
For Zamrooda Khan, a woman entrepreneur in downtown Srinagar, tackling the greatest challenges of life would not have been easy if her bees had not kept her busy. Draped in a black shawl with her head covered in a scarf, she cuts a striking figure. Miseries and melancholic moments in her life have failed to shake her resolve for living a dignified life. Khan has not only fought the battle against breast cancer successfully following her divorce, but has also turned herself into a small entrepreneur.
Khan realised that her job at a private school was fetching her too meagre an amount and was not enough for meeting her expenses. This, she says, made her think about additional income to shore up her earnings from the school.
“Since my father used to be a successful beekeeper of his times and I had learnt many things from him about beekeeping, I wasted no time and started a small apiary,” Khan told VillageSquare.in.
“This job suited me, for it kept me busy and that too with the nature’s gifted beings called honey bees,” says Khan.
“But I certainly want to expand this venture by setting up a processing plant in future. I have a passion for this profession,” Khan said.
“I am strongly interested in increasing the number of my bee colonies. If I have more colonies, I can think of migrating them out of Kashmir during winter. Those who have at least a truck-load of bee colonies, hire trucks in winters and migrate the colonies to warm areas that have more crops,” Bhat told VillageSquare.in.
“Shifting the hives out of Kashmir during winter makes a lot of economic sense to us. It gives us an extra crop and keeps the bees healthy as well,” Mohammad Yaseen, a beekeeper of Gulgam village, who has 140 beehives.
“We are now promoting honey bees as agents of pollination which will not only result in increasing crop productivity, but will also increase honey production. The idea is also to generate employment through this sector by value addition,” said Farooq Ahmad Shah, chief technical officer at Kashmir’s Department of Agriculture.
“The industry suffered a major setback in 1982 when a majority of Apis cerana bees were wiped out. Then the industry was revived with the introduction of Apis mellifera. But it also got affected by the disease in 2005-06 resulting in extermination of up to 80 percent of the colonies,” Shah said.
However, Shah added that the industry has again made a comeback in recent years with the help of technology and insecticides.
According to Farooq Ahmad, a former agriculture officer who has published several papers on beekeeping in journals such as The Bee World and Indian Bee Journal, and an orchardist, who has 10 kanals (around half a hectare) of orchard, one should have at least three bee colonies for ensuring a good production. “So, you can just imagine the potential we have for apiculture considering the availability of thousands of hectares of horticultural land in Kashmir,” Ahmad told VillageSquare.in.
But, Ahmad said that the Jammu & Kashmir government needs to address some pressing issues, which are hurting the beekeeping industry in Kashmir. “The most important of these issues is the lack of proper training for beekeepers and the unavailability of preventive and control measures for tackling pests and diseases,” Ahmad said.
Athar Parvaiz is a Srinagar-based journalist.
(This article was originally published on VillageSquare.in)
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