September 2025
Pumpkin fields as far as the eye can see. That’s what you’ll find in Karanjia block—a largely tribal area in the Mayurbhanj district, located in eastern Odisha state.
In the last growing season, farmers using improved agronomic techniques and disease-resistant seeds covered nearly 2,000 acres of Karanjia and neighboring Keonjhar district in pumpkin vines. This high-nutrition vegetable is bringing farmers an average net profit of US$830 to US$870 per acre, spurring tremendous economic growth.
Just a few years ago, the story was very different. Although the sandy loam soil and climate in this area is suitable for pumpkin cultivation, smallholder farmers using traditional growing methods and local pumpkin varieties struggled with low yields and poor marketability. The market demand is for larger pumpkins, and local varieties’ susceptibility to viral diseases resulted in high pesticide use and poor fruit quality.
The situation started to change in 2021, when East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation (EWS-KT) began to work with smallholder farmers in Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. EWS-KT set up vegetable production demonstration plots with local farmers and held training sessions on improved cultivation techniques. Raised beds, proper spacing, appropriate fertilization, and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) methods led to higher and better-quality yields for farmers. Still, the market challenges with local pumpkin varieties remained.
In 2022, EWS-KT established the Center of Excellence, a vegetable production learning hub in Keonjhar where farmers are exposed to sustainable farming practices to increase productivity and profitability. At the Center of Excellence, and in EWS-KT farmers’ pumpkin demonstration plots, farmers saw larger pumpkins with a uniform shape. They soon realized that this pumpkin variety, combined with the improved agronomic techniques they had learned, could finally enable them to meet market demand.
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Box 1: Improved pumpkin farming for better livelihoods Raibari Behera is a young vegetable farmer from Sarangagad, a village in Karanjia block, located in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha state. She farms on her own, with her husband alongside her, and she also grows crops as part of a women’s self-help group called Maa Tarini. In July 2023, Raibari cultivated pumpkins on an 800-square-meter demonstration plot, with the invaluable guidance of Sanu Kumar Behera, a Technical Field Officer with East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation. This experience taught her about improved farming techniques such as raised beds, quality seeds, and Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which prioritizes prevention and natural pest control methods. These approaches brought her significantly higher yields and an impressive ROI of 286%. Raibari proudly shared, “I have always believed that the right farming practices can make all the difference. Since adopting improved methods, I’ve seen a significant reduction in production costs, while improving the quality of my crops.” Raibari owns 2 acres of land where she grows vegetables such as tomatoes, hot peppers, cauliflower, and bitter gourds. However, after witnessing the successful results of her pumpkin demonstration plot, she decided to cultivate pumpkins on a larger scale during the most recent kharif season (July to October 2024). She leased 30 acres of land, producing 5,481 tonnes of pumpkins and earning an excellent net profit of 1,819,800 rupees (US$21,700) from her 738,000-rupee (US$8,800) investment. Raibari with EWS-KT Technical Field Officer Sanu Kumar Behera, who has been instrumental in Odisha’s pumpkin expansion. In addition to farming her own land, Raibari embarked on a collective pumpkin venture with the Maa Tarini self-help group. The women of the self-help group had attended EWS-KT’s training sessions at Raibari’s pumpkin demonstration plot, and some of them had shown an interest in cultivating pumpkins in order to develop their farming practices and improve their livelihoods. Pumpkin is a particularly attractive crop for female farmers, as it has relatively low investment costs and low maintenance requirements. In August 2024, Raibari and four other members of the self-help group leased 30 acres of land to grow pumpkins, selecting a disease-resistant variety and implementing improved farming techniques. For many women, the financial barriers to farming can be immense. Farming in a group can expand access to financial resources and help mitigate this challenge. To raise the money for their pumpkin farm, the women took loans from self-help groups, received a bank loan through a government program, and pooled their own funds, ultimately investing 738,000 rupees (US$8,800). It was a profitable investment: their collective pumpkin farm returned a net profit of 1,750,200 rupees (US$20,800), which they divided equally among themselves. With the profits, Raibari and her group are prioritizing their children’s education and further investing in their farming—including supplies and labor for the next season’s crop. Pumpkin is a crop that is better suited to the kharif season, so for the rabi season (November to April), Raibari plans to grow watermelons. She will be cultivating 8 acres of watermelon on leased land with her husband, and 10 acres with the self-help group. Raibari has shown that with the right support and knowledge, women can lead the way in farming innovation. Source: https://www.ews-kt.com/improved-pumpkin-farming-for-better-livelihoods/ |
Growing these pumpkins, which have good disease resistance, also meant that farmers could rely on newly learned pest management techniques like pheromone traps, rather than spraying pesticides. The significant reduction in the use of pesticides—with most farmers using none at all on their pumpkin fields—saved farmers considerable time and money, as well as benefiting the environment and consumers.
Since most of the pumpkins produced in this area are sold to traders and shipped to Kolkata, West Bengal (about four hours away), farmers also saw market advantages in the new variety’s long shelf life, ability to tolerate long-distance transport, and flat top and bottom, which make it easier to stack the pumpkins for travel.
Today, farmers in Karanjia and beyond have embraced high-quality seeds and better farming methods—and have scaled up pumpkin production like never before, leasing more and more land for pumpkin cultivation. At harvest time, hundreds of trucks come from West Bengal to collect growers’ high-quality pumpkins for this previously untapped market, and farmers have doubled or tripled their profits.
EWS-KT’s intervention has not only transformed the pumpkin marketplace but has created a new market for high-quality inputs, including pumpkin seeds, as farmers have switched from low-yielding traditional pumpkin varieties to high-yielding varieties. This is an exciting expansion opportunity for farmers, agro-input dealers, and others in the vegetable value chain.
EWS-KT Executive Director Stuart Morris recently visited the pumpkin fields of east Odisha. “Where there’s market and land available, the highly nutritious pumpkin is a wonder crop,” he said. Reflecting on EWS-KT’s Pumpkins in Africa project, he added, “East-West Seed founder and World Food Prize laureate Simon Groot’s vision for one million acres of pumpkin in Africa can take a lot of inspiration from these simple but highly profitable fields in Odisha, India.”
Note: This article was originally published at https://www.ews-kt.com/odisha-india-a-new-hub-for-pumpkin-farming/
