KUALA KRAI: A manager of a telecommunication shop who was laid-off due to the Covid-19 pandemic in March last year is now a successful farmer with a five-figure monthly income.
Mohd Saifullah Che Mat, 28, a graduate of Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), said being unemployed, he decided to carried out farming on a piece of land belonging to his father, Che Mat Hussin, 72.
“With a capital of RM4,000, I planted 800 green chilli plants, but my crop failed because I did not have the knowledge. You don’t grow vegetables just by planting them. You need to have the knowledge, and my first crop failed because I simply turned to farming with no knowledge about it.
“The failure did not demotivate me or made me feel disheartened. That got me to learn the techniques of farming from friends and experts in the field. I also got tips from YouTube,” he said when met at his vegetable farm in Kampung Chuchoh Puteri here.
Mohd Saifullah, who graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Science (Communication), said his second attempt was planting eggplant.
“I planted 1,200 of the plants and after a week, was able to harvest about 300 kilogrammes eggplants a day, involving sales of RM800.
“With the encouraging yield of the eggplant and the lucrative income from the crop, I then went on to fertigation farming and planted 1,000 ‘cili padi’ plants using a grant of RM10,000 obtained from the Rubber Industry Smallholders Development Authority (Risda),” he added.
The youngest of the five siblings said the fertigation farming was a success and he was now able to harvest about 100 kilogrammes of “cili padi” from his farm a week.
The harvest is sold for between RM12 and RM15 per kilogramme.
“I also sell them online to customers outside Kelantan, including Johor, Selangor, Perak and Kuala Lumpur,” he added. – Bernama
