A few days ago, social media was abuzz with news of a Bihar farmer growing a vegetable that cost Rs 1 lakh in the market. The farmer was flooded with praises on social media. However, now it turns out that the news was fake.
On Saturday, a team from a Hindi daily visited Singh’s village and found out that no such crop was being grown there. Even local villagers said that they hadn’t heard of any vegetable called “hop shoots” being grown in the vicinity.
It seems, when contacted on phone, the farmer told the newspaper that the crop was in Nalanda district, about 172 km away. When the team went to Nalanda, he told them that the crop was in Aurangabad.
Now, assistant director, horticulture, Jitendar Kumar said that if Singh’s claims are proven to be false, a case of fake farming will be registered against him. Clearing the confusion surrounding the photos that went viral, the Bihar agriculture department said that those pics were fake.
Singh, it seems, told the publication that he had started growing the vegetable on a trial basis, but because of ill-health couldn’t take care of the crops, as a result of which they dried.
A few days ago, IAS officer Supriya Sahu had tweeted about the “world’s costliest vegetable” being grown by a farmer from Bihar, Amresh Singh. Her tweet read: “One kilogram of this vegetable costs about Rs 1 lakh ! World's costliest vegetable, 'hop-shoots' is being cultivated by Amresh Singh an enterprising farmer from Bihar, the first one in India. Can be a game changer for Indian farmers. (sic)”
People went ga-ga over the tweet, which got 24,000 ‘likes’ and was retweeted over 5,000 times. However, a few days later, Sahu deleted the tweet.
(Edited by : Aditi Gautam)
First Published: Apr 5, 2021 5:35 PM IST
