Ernakulam: A 10-acre fish farm in Pallippuram and a dairy farm with 20 cows is the result of hard work by Nizar, a farmer hailing from Edavanakkad here. Even students from Agricultural University are lining up here to study about the integrated farming method followed by Nizar.
Start from loss
The field was first leased by some other person and he gave up after facing loss. It was then Nizar decided to start shrimp farming there on a trial basis. After three months of hard work, he faced a major setback and could not even get back the invested amount.
Fish and dairy farm
His next venture was fish farming. He chose grey mullet (Thirutha) fish which has huge demand in the market. 5000 juvenile fish were grown in the first phase. Grey mullet feeds on algae and micro aquatic plants. In order to develop such plants, Nizar brought three cows to the farm situated in the middle of the fields.
Integrated farming
The cow dung from the farm was mixed in the water in small quantity. With this, micro plants flourished and natural food was available aplenty for the fish. Nizar could avoid expense of purchasing artificial food. Now upto 25,000 juvenile fish are deposited in the farm at once.
Nizar also collects small fish from the field and add it in cattle feed after drying and grinding into fine powder. Though he started the farm with 3 cows, there are 20 cows in the dairy farm and upto 250 litres of milk is produced every day. Milk is directly distributed to the houses in the locality.
Prawns and crab
After the fish and dairy farms became successful, he also initiated prawn farming. He received the state government's award for best prawn farmer in the district in 2017. Now Nizar is planning to start Singapore-model crab farm at a cost of Rs 15 lakh. His wife Vahida and children Nehna and Nehar also support him in the works.
