Abu Tahir replied on Thursday, August 25, 2011 09:16 AM
Dear Ali,
Sorry I was misunderstood as I did not clear well!
These are the lump sum amounts against which the whole fields were sold.
The owner has to deduct his expenses, ploughing cost for at least twice, could be thrice, fertilizers, levelling for dirt lumps etc. The profit is 70% of the lump sum offer.
The peanut could only be lucrative if grown in sandy soil otherwise ripping, as you say, is a pain and very expensive. Own ripping is very difficult. Unfortunately the profit comes from the Afghan family’s labour as whole family put together their efforts in the field.
You have to have 100s of labourers to harvest and that’s where the profit falls sharply.
The Afghans are not in loss as when they come they bring 1000s of sheeps with them and they feed their herds from the redundant green peanut left-overs.
Irrigated lands are not sandy if I am not wrong and there harvesting may be expensive.
Why not wheat? Almost Rs 1000 per Mond (40 KG) and if rain poured in time, this is also as good as peanut.
One can have supporting business such as poultry farm, fish farm, goat farm etc, if you can manage a whole family permanently living there to take care of everything. This family could be given share of the profit, free milk and butter from the animals and sheep wool,for grazing the live stock. |
