When Pratibha Jha was 15 years old, she lost her father, who worked in the Bihar government’s agriculture department, to cancer. Due to her mother’s ill health, Pratibha had to get married at 16 years of age, just after completing her class 10th in the year 2000.
At her husband’s place in Mirzapur Hansi village of Bihar’sDarbhanga district, Pratibha spent most of her time doing household work with her head always covered as is customary in the state’s patriarchal society.
“When my husband got transferred to Hyderabad, I moved with him. But in 2016, my parents-in-law were not keeping well. So I went back to the village to look after them,” she says.
Pratibha Jha with oyster mushroom bags in the early days of cultivation. Pic: Pratibha Jha
At that time, she saw a newspaper article on a successful mushroom grower in Bihar. “It reminded me of my childhood when my father would take me to various mushroom farms while working in the agriculture department. Nobody in Darbhanga knew about mushrooms at that time,” she recollects.
The article got her interested in mushroom farming and she discussed it with her husband. “Everyone around me opposed the idea as women in our village are not encouraged to step out for work. But I was very keen to do something beyond household work. My husband supported me and I went ahead,” she says.
Pratibha went to the Darbhanga Agriculture Department and the officials directed her to Bihar Agricultural University (BAU) Sabor University in Bhagalpur for training. “There, I learned the basics of mushroom farming in 2016 and started cultivation of my first batch,” she says.
Preparing compost, the medium for cultivating button mushrooms. Pic: Pratibha Jha
She got one kg of milky mushroom spawns (seeds) from the university after training and invested another Rs600 to buy four kg more from a local spawn seller.
“With five kg of seeds, I put up 50 bags in a room of our old house lying vacant. I invested about Rs400 in procuring paddy straw, poly bags etc., investing a total of Rs1000.”
Since Pratibha was new to mushroom farming, she made some minor mistakes and the output was 6 kg per bag (against an average of 10kg per bag). She harvested 30kg of mushroom and sold it locally in the village, earning Rs2500.
“That first profit of Rs1500 prompted me to learn more and improve my skills,” Pratibha says.
Today, Pratibha prepares mushroom spawns, cultivates three types of mushrooms — oyster, milky white and button, and makes value-added products and trains others. Her monthly turnover is Rs2 lakh.
Pratibha Jha grows (1) milky white, (2) button and (3) oyster mushrooms.
After her first attempt, she took a 15-day master trainer course in mushroom farming at the Pusa University in Delhi. “I did the course in 2017 and learned everything from making spawns to training others,” she says.
On returning to Darbhanga, she began three things simultaneously: making mushroom seeds, growing mushrooms and training others to become rural entrepreneurs, especially women.