Kollam woman turns Covid setback into 30 tonne-a-year arrowroot enterprise

When the pandemic hit her husband's business, Aswathy did not wait for things to get better. She walked into her fields in Punalur and turned a small patch of arrowroot into a full-fledged farming enterprise, one that now produces nearly 30 tonnes of the tuber crop a year and has earned her recognition from one of the country's premier crop research institutes.

On July 27, as part of its 63rd foundation day celebrations, the ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (ICAR-CTCRI) in Thiruvananthapuram honoured eight progressive tuber crop farmers from across India for their contribution to scientific cultivation, technology adoption, and entrepreneurship. Aswathy was the only woman among them.

Farming was never an alien idea for Aswathy. Born and raised in Changanassery, Kottayam, into a joint family of traditional farmers, she grew up watching and gradually following her father through the fields, picking up the rhythm of cultivation long before she thought of it as a career. A school programme that distributed saplings to students, when she was in Grade 6, added to that early pull towards the soil.

When she got married into another farming family in Punaloor, the transition was less of a change and more of a continuation.

For years, arrowroot farming remained a modest affair for her. That changed with the pandemic. As her husband's business slowed down, Aswathy decided to scale up what had been a side activity into acres of serious cultivation, a decision driven by the need to keep her family afloat, and one that eventually reshaped her identity as a farmer.

Today, arrowroot is at the heart of Aswathy's farming. The gluten-free starch, extracted from plant rhizomes and long used for food thickening and traditional remedies, is processed into powder and sold through her factory outlet in Punalur, V One Organic, run under the local Krishi Bhavan.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has now agreed to help her explore a new venture: turning arrowroot waste into biodegradable cups, a project currently in the research phase.

Not just arrowroot
Her fields aren't limited to arrowroot. She cultivates five different varieties of sweet potato, some of which are specifically suited for diabetic patients, alongside other tuber crops through a farming season that typically runs about nine months.

Aswathy calls herself an organic farmer whose goal is to reduce Kerala's dependence on Tamil Nadu for its vegetables, and to ensure healthy, locally grown food to the public.

Her husband, Saji, has backed her through the venture, and the family's next generation is already tilting towards the world she has built. Their elder daughter Krishna is a first-year Agricultural Engineering student, while younger daughter Meera is a grade 11 student.