Employment Opportunities through Raising of Horticultural Nursery – A Case Study

One of the very important enterprises for self-employment generation is the horticultural nursery. It can create a good income and employment generation. It is a success story of Md. Shahadat Hossain, Katajhar Pathar, Barpeta district of Assam. Initially, he could not develop his nursery although he was very keen to establish a horticultural nursery before he associated with Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Barpeta, Assam during 2005. He could understand the technologies necessary for the development of a horticultural nursery after he underwent vocational training at KVK, Barpeta. The case study was conducted with the objective to know the economic benefit through raising of a horticultural nursery. The findings showed that in the first four years, he could get a very less net return. In the first year, he earned a net return of Rs. 8240.00 with B-C ratio 1.26. But, after getting technical guidance from Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Barpeta, his income level grew up steadily and during 2021-22, he could get a net return of Rs. 67,21,300.00 with the B-C ratio 3.35. At present, he has developed a good number of quality grafted, layered planting materials of high value fruit crops like avocado, mango, dragon fruit, litchi, malta, apple, mousambi, and so on. Besides running his own family, he has given employment to 15 labours and thus livelihood for 15 families.