For a farmer with a small plot, the usual advice is to grow more on the same land. Mushroom farming offers another route: growing up, indoors, in bags, with very little land at all. A government factsheet released on Tuesday says this crop is emerging as a viable livelihood option for farmers, women and rural youth across India.

According to the factsheet, mushroom cultivation can become a pathway to livelihood diversification and entrepreneurship when it is backed by proper training, technical guidance and productive infrastructure. It also says that growing interest in healthier diets is raising the crop's importance in India's horticulture sector. Mushrooms are generally low in calories, fat and carbohydrates, and they provide protein, dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Two journeys, one lesson

The factsheet uses two very different stories to make its point.

The first is from Ippatam village in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. At 20, Ruthu was working as a waste picker and wanted an independent livelihood. Her chance came through a short-term course under the Skill Training for Rural Youth (STRY) initiative. Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Guntur, trained her in every stage of mushroom production: composting, spawning, casing, pinning, cropping and harvesting. The programme was supported by the State Agricultural Management and Extension Training Institute (SAMETI), Andhra Pradesh, and the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), Hyderabad.

Ruthu began growing milky mushrooms and built a regular supply to the local market. She now produces about 8 kg a day and earns around Rs 35,000 a month. She has also learnt what makes a harvest succeed: clean, disease-free paddy straw, good-quality spawn, and the right temperature and moisture levels.

The second story is from Uttarakhand. In 2013, Hiresha Verma, an IT professional from Charba village in Dehradun, started growing oyster mushrooms with just 25 bags in a servant quarter. Her Rs 2,000 investment brought back about Rs 5,000, and that convinced her to turn it into a business. She set up "Han Agrocare" in Dehradun and began with three bamboo huts as a pilot, each holding 500 bags. The company can now produce about one tonne of mushrooms a day and employs 15 people. Hiresha has also trained more than 2,000 women and farmers in the hill regions.

Why this matters beyond the numbers

Taken together, the two stories show the full range of the opportunity. One person entered through a skill-training scheme with almost no capital. The other is a professional who scaled a small experiment into an enterprise. In both cases, the main input was knowledge rather than land.

This matters in a country where landholdings keep getting smaller and young people are leaving farming. A crop that grows in a shed, a hut or a spare room makes agriculture something people can take part in without owning much land. It suits women balancing work at home, young people looking for a first business, and farmers who want income between seasons.

The factsheet's emphasis on training is a reminder of where the real work lies. KVKs, SAMETI and MANAGE all appear in Ruthu's story, so the extension network is key to growing the sector. If that support reaches more districts, many more growers like Ruthu and Hiresha could follow.

With inputs from IANS