Surat: South Gujarat is a major producer of mangoes and sugarcane, but it is the banana farmers who have been making consistent profits in the region from their yields for the past five years, barring 2017. This is why cultivation area for banana crop has seen five-fold increase in the past five years.Assistant director of horticulture, Surat, Dinesh Padaliya said, “Banana crop has been giving consistent return year after year. There are no major issues of disease in this crop and a farmer can earn up to Rs 60,000 per bigha with good average yield.”A banana farmer Hitesh Upadhaya from Mahuva of Surat district, who cultivated 15 tonne per bigha of this crop last season, said, “ Unlike mango, it been consistent delivering. Market does fluctuate, but compared to other horticulture items, it is always stable.”Farmers say on a bigha of land, there can be 700 banana trees and a tree yields about 27 kg of fruit. A farmer incurs an expense of Rs 50 per tree in a year by way of medicine, water, manure etc. By spending Rs 35,000 on a bigha, a farmer earns Rs 1.35 lakh by selling banana at a rate of Rs 9 per kg.“In normal years, too, the earning is around Rs 60,000 per bigha,” Upadhayay added.Bhagubhai Patel (70), a farmer from Kamrej taluka who was given Rishi of Krishi award in 2010 for growing banana, said, “Some diseases in the crop have been noticed of late. In some cases, the whole stem of banana tree gets torn. There have also been instances when black spots start to appear on the fruit. There is an urgent need to look into this.”Approximately 66,309 hectare of land is under banana cultivation in Gujarat. In 2016-17, banana production in the state was pegged at 42,93,233 metric tonne. In Bharuch, Surat, and Narmada districts alone, 12,571 hectare, 8,705 hectare and 8,160 hectare of land respectively is under banana cultivation. In Bharuch, the production was 895,055.20 MT, in Surat it was 61,0220.50 MT and in Narmada 563,040.00 MT, sources said.

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