The ‘Konkan Fruit Fest 2023’, co-organised by the Botanical Society of Goa (BSG) and the Agricos Alumni Association (AAA), has been the culmination of a long journey of inter-generational transfer of leadership.
A young crop of agriculture graduates, home-grown and home-schooled in Goa, have proved their mettle and taken charge of making Goa greener than they have inherited it from the previous generation.
Standing tall among them are Vandit R Naik and his wife, Priyanka Parab Naik, who have made their RasRaj Goa Farm, Mollem, into a Vassudaiva Kuttumbakam for all those who love Mother Nature, specially fruit plants and honeybees.
Liza Pinheiro is a GCCI-FIIRE ‘Business Diva 2022’ winner who has become an ace event manager, while Shweta Gaonkar has conquered hearts by overcoming fear to climb a coconut tree, and Dhannika Dias Pereira drives a paddy transplanter.
GREEN DREAMS
Flash back to 2015-‘19, when almost every single candidate who enrolled in Goa’s first college of agriculture, in Sulcorna, had just one career option in mind: “I want to be an Assistant Agriculture Officer”.
Being a ‘gazetted’ officer, instead of being a teacher or a clerk, was the sole driving force that brought students to a remote village in Quepem. Vandit was an exception: he wanted to learn grafting and dairy management to better manage his father’s farm.
Few had any other ideas in terms of careers, though some were good at sketching, singing, dancing and even fashion designing, as could be seen at the inter-collegiate youth festivals.
The Goa Agri Expo 2016, organised by SAMETI (or State Agriculture Management & Extension Training Institute) was the first opportunity for the students of agriculture to participate in an agricultural trade fair. Three of them had visited the ‘Krishi Mela’ at the University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK-Bangalore, in November, 2015 and seen an event that attracts lakhs of farmers.
When the Konkan Fruit Fest 2016 was held at the end of April 2016, ten students were given the opportunity to manage a stall on their own.
At KFF 2017, some of the students tried their hand at entrepreneurship. They produced and sold products from mango panna to banana pseudostem juice mocktails and earned profits for themselves. Their juniors presented cultural items including folk dances, music and singing.
In mid-September 2019, fresh graduate in agriculture, Priyanka Parab received a birthday gift: she was elected as the youngest Treasurer ever of the Botanical Society of Goa, a post to which she was re-elected in March 2022, because she has performed the task well.
Estella Pires, another young graduate in Agriculture, joined in as the Secretary.
If in 2019, the BSG was able to revive the ‘Plant Utsav’ after a hiatus of seven years, it roped in Liza Pinheiro to assist Priyanka and Estella in presenting the KFF 2022 after a break due to the virus and the lockdown.
Riya Metri, Gayatri Gawas, Karishma Parsekar and Preety Jhalmi came to assist their fellow alumni in 2022 and 2023.
Today, the AAA has come into its own as an organization that can conduct activities from webinars to seminars, tree planting to plant shows and fruit festivals.
Perhaps, the AAA will add value to the ‘Festival of Plants and Flowers’ at SFX Siolim in mid-August this year. It is an event from which they have learnt, too.
The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan