Mushrooming success!

Many women are now competing with men in various fields and provingtheir mettle by creating records and winning awards at state and nationallevels through sheer commitment, dedication and expertise in their preferred domain.

Some enter business and flourish because of their connections, background, image etc, while there are others who just have oodles of self-confidence and succeed in their chosen venture without any props whatsoever.Koppula Sri Lakshmi belongs to the latter kind.

Once a plain vanilla homemaker, Koppula Sri Lakshmi, who hails fromGudivada in Krishna district, is now a name to reckon with in Rajamahendravaram, where she has been successfullyrunning a mushroom unit for six years. She has bagged manystate and national awards as an outstanding woman farmer.

It all began one fine day when she decided to do something as the meagre salary she was drawing then as a teacher was leading her nowhere. She started looking for additional streams of income to take the family to the next level of living. Things fell in the place easily.

She had heard about mushroom business and underwent training. She then started a mushroom unit in 2013 by investing an amount ofRs 6,000. Initially, she incurred loss and later invested huge amounts invain for some time. Then, with self-confidence and perseverance, she went ahead and learned farming techniques andfinally excelled in her field. Today, she is getting a monthly income of Rs 1 lakh.

Speaking to The Hans India, Sri Lakshmi points out that presently she has invested Rs 15lakh and plans are afoot to expand her mushroom unit. At present, six persons areworking with her. Once she expands her business, the headcount could go to 40 to 50 employees. “I wantto be number one in the business in India”, she says.

Spawn-Fungus (mushroom seed) is produced in their own laboratory.Later, the fungus is mixed with hay, packed in a plastic one kgcover, and keep in a darkroom for 21 days. In the meantime, thefungus takes hay as its food and grows into mushroom in various sizes.Later, it is packed and sold in 200 gm and 500gm packets.

Sri Lakshmi says that the monthly production capacity of the unit isthree metric tonnes. At present, two varieties are beingproduced--Milky and Ostrai. Milky has tremendous demand in the marketand efforts are on to increase its production. Milky can be produced throughout the year and Ostrai is during winter season only. Themushroom unit was started in Rajamahendravaram because of conduciveclimatic conditions as well as necessary humidity required formushroom production, she says.

There are 3,000 varieties in mushroom, but only four or five are in the eatable category. Growing of button mushrooms is a costlyaffair and air-conditioned rooms are required to produce them, she explains.

In the year 2015, she received the National Best Woman Mushroom FarmerAward and in 2016 and 2017 the Best Woman Farmer Award from the CentralTobacco Research Institute (CTRI). She also received a similar awardfrom Sakshi Telugu daily in 2017 and has now been selected for the Best WomanFarmer Award from RythuNestam, which she will receiveon October 7thin Hyderabad. After her marriage, she completed graduation and did double MA withAgriculture, Economics and History, which helped her a lot in the longjourney.

She has undergone training in the Directorate of MushroomResearch Centre in Dehradun as well as in Bangalore. Besides, she underwent training in AgriculturalUniversities of Odisha, Kerala, Coimbatore and Hyderabad and acquired immense knowledge through interactions with scientistsof those institutions.

Today, the Agriculture Department has recognised the mushroom unit she owns as the mother unit and is sendingmany persons for training in mushroom production, she says with asmile and adds, “We are also producing mushroom pickles which are alsomoving fast in the market.”