A Bihari woman, Lalmuni Devi of Azadnagar village in Patna district, has found her name among the top 25 farmers in Asia. The surprising thing is that she does not belong to any big Industry house and she is not even a member of the Bihar Development and Industrial Council (BDIC) but she showed the world the way to implement the concept at ground level. She had a concept to grow mushroom by her own methods and she just did that.

Lalmuni Devi is a semi-literate and daily wage earner in Bihar. She earlier had adopted mushroom farming under the guidance of Indian Council of Agriculture and Research (ICAR). She had taken this decision even she has no any land on her own name. She decided to begin the mushroom farming with a small initial investment of Rs 500 in her own house.

With this initiative, she earned the recognition as an enterprising farmer in the state. Now, a well-known Mexico based institute has ranked her among the top 25 Asians in Mexican Gallery of the CIMMYT. The institute is linked with research for improvement of maize and wheat crops.

Further, Lalmuni has inspired more than 20 other women of her village to start mushroom cultivation on their land. Lalmuni said that when some instructors from ICAR had taught her how to grow mushroom, she decided to go in this cultivation.

Later, she started growing mushrooms in her own house and started earning good profits from the cultivation. She started using her indigenous method of mushroom cultivation and her methods earned her the wide acclamation at International level. Lalmuni started using balls of wheat husks and rotten hay to grow mushrooms.

The ICAR had provided her free seeds for two years initially but now, she buys the seeds from this institute at Rs 60 per kg. But, the negative part of the story is that Lalmuni have not get much attention from Indian business houses and even from the Bihar government despite gaining recognition at International level.

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