Did you know that India imports 38 percent of the world’s production of date palm? The largest exporters of dates to India are Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan.

When Rajasthan-based Mukesh Maanjoo caught on to this fact, he was disheartened.

“The climatic conditions of both Pakistan and India are the same, so why don’t we cultivate dates ourselves? We should lose some of the dependency on other countries,” he says.

Before taking up date farming, Mukesh worked as a commando at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi for 15 years.

In 2018, he took voluntary retirement from the NSG services and decided to cultivate dates in Pilani.

“Agriculture is in my DNA. I have seen my father and grandfathers grow crops. But like them, I did not want to grow traditional crops like mustard, wheat, and grams,” he says.

“I wanted to try new technologies. Therefore, I was looking for crops like dates that required less water to grow in our dry region of Rajasthan,” he adds.

After a three-day training at the Centre of Excellence for Date Palm in Jaisalmer, he procured 250 date palm seeds of yellow-coloured Barhi and red-coloured Khuneji varieties.

He points out that growing dates have been extremely fruitful as these varieties give high yields in low maintenance and have lower mortality rates as well.

Mukesh has also created a pond where he harvests up to three lakh litres of rainwater. “This rainwater is an elixir for our dates as it contains nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and much more,” he says.

“This also helps me save 20 to 25 percent on irrigation in the dry region. Additionally, I use drip irrigation that takes water directly to the roots through pipes and minimises water wastage,” he adds.

Mukesh has 250 date palms, and last season, he harvested five tonnes of organic dates which earned him a huge income of Rs 12 lakh.

“I remember people would say, ‘paisa ped me thode laagey hai (money doesn’t grow on trees)’. I wanted to prove this saying wrong,” he smiles, “You can harvest money from trees if you follow the right farming methods and cultivate the right crops.”