Mustang farmer shows what is possible despite government

Before the road got here to Nepal’s prime apple growing region, the bumper fruit harvest would rot in the orchards in autumn. Farmers tried to feed apples to livestock, but the cattle were sick of eating it.

There were few jobs, a war was going on, and most young men migrated out of this spectacularly scenic but isolated region along the Kali Gandaki River between Annapurna and Dhaulagiri.  

Saroj Tulachan was one of them. He left his small homestead near Tukuche and walked five days to Pokhara, took a bus to Kathmandu and through contacts got a job as a chef in Japan.

“I was just like a coolie there, working in the kitchen, but I learnt a lot about farming techniques in my spare time, and kept dreaming of the day I would return to Nepal with savings in my pocket,” says Tulachan. But it took him 16 long years to come back.  

But much more important than savings, he came back with a dream. In the beginning, like most returnees, he struggled to adjust and find a meaningful job to pay for high living expenses. Then the Covid pandemic hit, and Tulachan fell ill. 

“I said to myself, why am I staying in the city when my home in the mountains is safe and a heaven on earth?” Tulachan recalls, his face wrinkled in a wide smile. 

Tulachan’s dream was always to return to his native Mustang, Covid just made him bring the plan forward. What he has achieved since coming back is a remarkable example of passion, simple technical innovation and marketing skills transforming rural Nepal in just a few years.

Improving on the knowledge about apple farming that he learnt from his father, Tulachan uses a high-density tall spindle farming method to grow apples vertically like vines rather than trees. The system improves productivity through early yield, better fruit quality, and reduced costs for care. Each plant produces more than a much bigger tree of the local Marpha variety, and the fruits fetch a higher price in markets in Pokhara and Kathmandu.

In the past year, business has been so successful that Tulachan has expanded from the orchard he inherited from his father to buy and lease more property along the Kali Gandaki floodplain. He is also helping neighbouring farms in Tukuche, Marpha and Jomsom to adopt the new technique.

“It does not make sense only for me to do well, the whole community needs to benefit,” says Tulachan. “What is most important is self-fulfillment and happiness, I can’t take my money with me when I die.”

And Tulachan is happiest among his apple trees. He is up at the crack of dawn and with his garden shears is off for a morning of pruning, training and grafting apple plants. He has built his own irrigation system channeling water from a nearby stream.

Learning from his Japan stay, he has also established a ryokan-style inn called Mustang Eco Hill Resort by the Pokhara-Jomsom highway with a restaurant serving organic produce from his farm, and a gift shop. 

A new addition to Tulachan’s eco-tourism and apple orchard venture is a cold storage which evens out the autumn glut after the apple harvest when prices are low, so the fruits fetch a higher price in April-May.

“If you want to get rich quick, this is not your line of business,” warns Tulachan, walking between neat rows of tall spindle apple stems to check on his drip irrigation system. “You have to be patient, and plan ten years into the future.”

His Japanese high density apple variety takes only three years to ripen, compared to 15 years for local trees. Presently, the farm harvests 18 tons of apple every season, and with the new plants in his expanded farm, Tulachan expects 40 tons. The farm makes Rs3.5 million in profit every year, which goes for upkeep, servicing loans and upgrading his inn. 

Traders now come all the way from Kathmandu to book Tulachan’s apples. His apple varieties sell for Rs400 per kg at Bhatbhateni department stores, more than three times more than the traditional Marpha variety.

A flag of Nepal flutters proudly in the afternoon wind on the roof of the Mustang Eco Hill Resort, and Tulachan says Nepalis who stop at his farm marvel that there is a place like this in Nepal. He has set an example that it is possible to run a profitable business and create jobs despite the government.

He says: “There is no point blaming the government, we can do a lot by ourselves. If they just scaled up what I have done here to the national level by investing in tourism, agriculture and hydropower, Nepal can also be prosperous.”