A farmer from Bihar's Aurangabad district is making heads turn on social media, not by any crazy moves or any offbeat tweet. Social media is abuzz with the young farmer cultivating a unique vegetable named 'hop shoots' that costs about Rs 1 lakh.
Touted as the costliest vegetable ever, the cultivation of 'hop shoots' started on a trial basis and more than 60% of its cultivation has already happened successfully. For this the farmer invested Rs 2.5 lakh to grow hop shoots, a crop that is rarely seen in the Indian market.
The farmer identified as Amresh Singh is the first person to start hop shoots cultivation on 5 kathas of land. The best part is that he has not used any chemical fertilizers or pesticides in its cultivation.
The news gained attention after senior bureaucrat Supriya Sahu shared the story on Twitter. She called the development 'a game changer for Indian farmers'.
The IAS tweeted, "One kilogram of this vegetable costs about Rs 1 lakh! The world's costliest vegetable, 'hop shoots' is being cultivated by Amresh Singh an enterprising farmer from Bihar, the first one in India. Can be a game-changer for Indian farmers."
Usually grown in America and Europe, the crop was first cultivated in Himachal Pradesh's Lahaul, but due to the exorbitant rate, it impacted the marketing.
Amresh Singh has said that if PM Modi makes a special arrangement for the promotion of the cultivation of hop shoots, it will make the farmers earn 10 times more than they can do by other means of agriculture within a couple of years.
Why so expensive
This is the costliest vegetable because of the high cultivation and harvesting costs. Additionally, it takes three years for it to come to fruition. In addition, the tiny green tips of the hop plant have to be harvested individually and by hand, which involves a lot of hard work and patience.
Qualities of hop-shoots
The fruit and stem of hop-shoots are used in beverage making, beer making, and for medical purposes such as in preparing antibiotics. The medicine prepared from the stem of hop shoots is said to have a high curative effect in the treatment of Tuberculosis (TB).
