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How polyhouse farming in Rajasthan’s desert is turning farmers into millionaires

The 500-odd farmers of Gurha Kumawatan, a village in arid Rajasthan, are now millionaires thanks to polyhouse farming. Their hard work, innovation and unlimited ambition offers a path to prosperity for others in India.

In the vast aridity of Rajasthan, winter brings relief from the scorching heat, but also an eerie stillness. Life here moves to the rhythm of sand and shrub.

On early mornings of late December, Jaipur, like any large city in north India, quivers in a silvery film of pollution. As you drive past the city’s last high-rises and elevated roads, the atmosphere is an emulsion of dust and smoke. Every movement lifts the earth into the air.

Here, dawn comes, but day doesn’t until noon. The dim, silver sun in an aluminum sky offers little heat or light. The fields are a naked beige after the monsoon groundnut crop has been dug up. The first green shoots of winter wheat and bajra have barely broken through the soil.

In a census of lifeforms here, trees would be an inconsequential minority. Among the trees, neem and khejri (also known as shami in most of north India and vanni, banni and jammi in the south) dominate. When I say dominate, they average two-or-three an acre.

The shami is considered a symbol of kshatriya valour. Legend says the Pandavas hid their weapons in a shami tree. Now, these trees, pruned and sheared for the season, resemble charred limbs raised in silent prayer. By summer, the khejri would yield nutritious pods called sangri used in the Rajasthani dish ker-sangri.

A wonder in the desert

Once we reach Gurha Kumawatan, a village 40km to the west of Jaipur, the transformation is startling. The fields are suddenly green and scurry with life. The raw sting of the air carries the red-wattled lapwings’ shrill and quirky ‘did-he-do-it’ call.  Towering above the farmland, giant semi-circular enclosures—like Amazon warehouses—dot the landscape.

These are polyhouses, industrial-scale farms that allow farmers to produce up to ten times more food than in open fields. Using a technique called protected farming, they require only a fraction of the water, fertilizers, and chemicals needed in traditional agriculture even on poor soil and climate that’s oppressively extreme.

Farm as factory

In a modern factory work floor, machines, trained hands and processes are streamlined to mass-produce goods with high accuracy and repeatability. Farming, however, is ruled by unpredictable variables. A season’s toil can be undone by a few spells of unseasonal rain.

“Protected farming in polyhouses helps farmers run their fields like factories,” explains Balraj Singh, vice-chancellor of SKN Agriculture University, Jaipur, and one of India’s earliest scientists working on this technology. “They can control inputs like water and nutrients with precision, leading to vastly better yields. For instance, in northern India, tomatoes can typically be grown for just four to five months. In polyhouses, they thrive for nine or even more. Open-field tomato productivity is about 2.5 tons per hectare, but under protected cultivation, it jumps to 200 tons.”

The power of precision

Precision agriculture involves providing plants with exactly what they need, exactly when they need it. By delivering the right amount of water, nutrients, and crop protection directly to the roots, farmers can enhance productivity and maximize yields. When combined with protected farming, the results are truly remarkable.

In Gurha Kumawatan, you need to drill deeper than 150 metres to find groundwater, and even that is mostly saline. But it boasts India’s highest concentration of polyhouses, with nearly 1,200 acres under protected cultivation.

Most of the 500-odd farmers who own them are now millionaires, their combined turnover exceeding ₹250 crore. Unlike the average Indian farmer, who earns just over ₹10,000 a month, they live in massive mansions and drive around in snazzy cars. With staggering yields and wealth, they proudly call their region ‘mini-Israel.’

The story of this ‘wonder in the wasteland’ indeed has origins in Israel, with a pioneering farmer called Khemaram Choudhary in the lead, some fortuitous twists, relentless hard work and unlimited ambition. 

The ‘mini-Israel’

Khemaram, 52, is a short man with pink cheeks, a bulbous nose and a ready smile. Dressed in loose white kurta-pyjama, an oatmeal Nehru-jacket, the traditional red bandhni safa with white speckles, and grey Skechers slip-ons, he has the reputation as a hustler who refuses to settle for the status quo.  He is revered as the Bhishma Pitamaha of polyhouse farming—not just in Gurha Kumawatan, but across Rajasthan.

A chance visit to Israel in 2012 proved to be a turning point for Khemaram. A bright and curious student, he was forced to leave senior school due to family finances. As a teenager, he took on the responsibility of tending to his family’s three-acre farm, despite its meagre yields. Yet, his passion for innovation never faded—he eagerly attended local krishi melas, drawn to the promise of scientific farming methods and the possibility of better income.

By 2012, Khemaram had earned a reputation as a ‘progressive’ farmer, breaking regional records with his watermelon yields. Then, out of the blue, he received a call informing him that he had been selected for a 15-day tour of Israel to study modern farming techniques. “I didn’t even know a place called Israel existed. I thought it was a wrong call and hung up,” he recalls. His speech is a steady stream of heavy Jat accented Hindi that is unhindered by punctuation, pause or the need to breathe.

“Just days before receiving the call, I had stopped by Sanganer airport after delivering a truckload of watermelons to a trader, hoping to catch a glimpse of a plane taking off or landing. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be sitting in one myself,” he says.

Khemaram was part of a delegation led by Harjilal Burdak, Rajasthan’s then agriculture minister—an octogenarian and a staunch vegetarian like Khemaram himself. Their shared dietary preferences brought them closer during the trip, giving Khemaram front-row access to every high-tech farming demonstration.

When Israeli farmers and scientists claimed it was possible to earn ₹15-20 lakh from just an acre of arid land, Khemaram was convinced it was an elaborate con job.

After all, Israel receives just 508mm of annual rainfall, barely different from Jaipur district’s 565mm, where Gurha Kumawatan lies in one of its driest parts.

“Look, I was a good, hardworking farmer. I had never made a profit of more than ₹1.5 lakh, nor had I heard of any farmer in India making much more. And you know what? The Israelis gave us water that was processed from the gutter! If mantri ji had known, I swear he’d have flown in a plane full of Bisleri water from India for the trip,” he recalls with a chuckle.

While most of the touring party comprised political freeloaders and factotums, Rajasthan officials were eager to prove the costly trip was worthwhile. They urged Khemaram to convert 1,000 square meters of his land into a protected polyhouse farm, covering all expenses.

To fob them off, he made a bold counteroffer—he’d do it if they funded 4,000 square meters (nearly an acre). A week later, approval arrived.

State subsidy and super profits

At the time, setting up a polyhouse with necessary equipment cost ₹40 lakh. The government offered ₹30 lakh as subsidy, arranged low-interest loans from state banks, and provided full technical support from the local agricultural university.

When Khemaram began growing hybrid, seedless cucumbers (now commonly called English cucumbers in India) inside the polyhouse, his family, including his father, thought he was being duped.

As the structure rose, the village consensus was clear: Khemaram was building a “palace of dreams” that would only end up in debt and disaster.

“My very first cucumber crop earned me ₹13.6 lakh in just three months. I could start harvesting within a month. It was nothing short of a miracle,” he recalls.

The seedless hybrid cucumber grown in the polyhouses has a smooth, waxy, deep green skin, and is sweeter than traditional Indian varieties. When Khemaram took his first cucumber harvest to Jaipur’s Muhana mandi, traders wouldn’t buy it because they hadn’t seen it. “They thought I was massaging the cucumbers with oil to make them shiny and sweet. In the first week, I gave everybody in the market free samples,” he recalls.

Today, after less than 15 years of polyhouse farming, Khemaram is a multi-millionaire. His annual profits exceed ₹2 crore. He spent ₹1 crore each on the weddings of his two daughters to wealthy city grooms, owns multiple plots and villas in Jaipur’s elite enclaves, and has no worries about his 27-year-old son needing a job outside agriculture.

My very first cucumber crop earned me ₹13.6 lakh in just three months. I could start harvesting within a month. It was nothing short of a miracle.

Khemaram Choudhary, Farmer, Gurha Kumawatan

The Roman past

The practice of growing crops, especially fruits and vegetables, in controlled environments like polyhouses dates back centuries. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder documented proto-greenhouses used in 1st century AD to cultivate melons year-round in enclosed structures called specularia made of translucent stone sheets. These were built to ensure Emperor Tiberius had a steady supply of his favourite fruit every day of the year.

Following World War II, as plastic became more accessible, European farmers began covering their fields in winter, pioneering modern protected farming techniques that would later have a big impact on global agriculture.

Protection from debt

Khemaram’s near-instant success not only inspired neighbouring farmers to adopt polyhouse farming but also reversed the trend of young people migrating to cities in search of well-paying jobs.

“Earlier, people here mocked me, saying I had more debt than hair on my head. Now, farmers from across the country come to learn from me, and the same banks that once shooed me away now line up outside my gate, asking for business and customer referrals,” Khemaram says with a grin, seated in the spacious ante-room of his bungalow—a space that doubles as a gym, complete with a treadmill and oversized boom boxes.

Thanks to his polyhouse earnings, 72-year-old Gangaram Nitharwal now owns two petrol pumps and multiple mansions, including one perched atop a hillock, offering him a panoramic view of Gurha Kumawatan.

Gangaram’s rugged face, leathery skin, and stubby, calloused fingers tell the story of a life spent in the fields. Seated in his sprawling lounge—its three sides encased in glass—he reclines on a rustic cane throne, wearing a more vibrant safa than Khemaram, surrounded by charpoys draped in plush candy-coloured cushions. There are ornate hookahs, and air-conditioning too. His voice is low and measured, carrying a quiet air of authority. After all, the eldest of his two sons is now the village sarpanch. A white Toyota Fortuner is always at Gangaram’s disposal. “I make more money from polyhouse farming than my two petrol pumps. Can you believe it,” he asks, tousling the newly acquired white poodle that hasn’t been assigned a name yet.

Prosperity unlimited

The economics of polyhouse farming are compelling.

“Two years after I began polyhouse farming, people in the village thought I was either lying about my income or had a currency-printing machine,” says Khemaram. Soon enough, they all followed his lead.

Setting up a 4,000-square-metre polyhouse with drip irrigation, foggers, and sprinklers to regulate temperature and humidity costs over ₹50 lakh. Most large polyhouses are built alongside ponds, roughly the size of a tennis court, to harvest rainwater. Water usage is so minimal that a single monsoon’s rainfall can last nearly a year.

A slew of central and state government schemes offer subsidies covering up to 90% of the capital cost.

Enclosures used for protected farming can take many forms. The low-tech greenhouses are erected on beams of bamboo or local wood. The plastic shade helps to protect against heavy rain or heat.

The polyhouses used by the farmers of Gurha Kumawatan fall into the medium-to-high-tech category. Semi-translucent 200-micron polyethylene sheets are used to cover grids of galvanized iron pipes that act as the skeleton for polyhouses. The sheets can last up to 5-7 years. While all the polyhouses have drip irrigation, foggers, and sprinklers for humidity and temperature control, some of the more expensive, high-tech polyhouses have IoT devices and complete automation.

A happy harvest

An acre of polyhouse farming yields, on average, 100 tons of cucumbers annually, significantly higher than the 20-30 tons per acre typical of traditional open-field cucumber farming. Prices can soar to ₹35 per kilogram when demand spikes, but most farmers prefer fixed-price, long-term contracts with buyers. The current going rate is around ₹25 per kilogram, translating to a revenue of ₹25 lakh per acre.

Polyhouse farmers typically employ resident worker families, known as seeri, who receive 25% of the total income. After accounting for their wages and roughly ₹5 lakh in input costs, farmers can net a profit of ₹12 to 15 lakh per year from an acre.

Though yellow and red bell peppers yield only 35 tons per acre, far less than cucumbers, their income potential is higher since prices can climb to ₹250 per kilogram.

“It is easier to get labour for polyhouses because they do not have to work in extreme heat. The 25% revenue-sharing system is a partnership, giving them an incentive to make the crop a success,” explains Khemaram.

While floriculture in glasshouses is not new to India, serious efforts toward protected food crop cultivation began in 1998 as part of an Indo-Israel collaboration. Israel, an agricultural technology superpower, has pioneered innovations that allow its farmers to grow tropical fruits like avocados, oranges, and mangoes even in the arid Negev Desert.

No-entry for nature?

Currently, protected farming of the kind practiced by Gurha Kumawatan farmers has a significant limitation. Only those plants that are self-pollinating such as tomato, chilli, seedless cucumber, brinjal, and strawberries can be grown.

Self-pollinating plants have both male and female reproductive parts in the same flower, such as tomatoes, chillies, seedless cucumbers, and strawberries, so the pollen from the male part (anther) can fertilize the female part (stigma) within the same flower. Cross-pollinating plants need help from nature to produce fruit.

In the controlled environment of polyhouses, natural pollinators such as birds and bees are absent.

In Europe and countries with a colder climate, bumblebees are used for pollination in polyhouses. India does not allow the use of bumblebees because they might affect local biodiversity. However, scientists in India are working on using a stingless native bee species specifically for protected cultivation.

“In the initial years, we realized Israeli technology did not work all that well. India has a diverse climate, and Indian farmers cannot afford a system that requires a lot of electricity,” says Balraj Singh, clad in a navy windowpane check blazer and white chinos.

To address this, Indian scientists adapted the technology to function with minimal power, incorporating off-grid solutions like solar panels. Modifications were also made to suit regional climatic conditions and farming practices.

China leads the world in protected cultivation, with nearly 3.5 million hectares under cover, largely due to government support, technological advancements, and a focus on food security. In contrast, India has only around 2 lakh hectares, as the concept has yet to gain widespread adoption.

An equal opportunity

Many smallholder farmers are hesitant due to the high initial investment, often perceiving it as a practice suited only for the wealthy.

Not many of Gurha Kumawatan’s farmers had the means either.

Babulal Jat, 38, is a lean, gangly man with large ears and sunken cheeks. He spent most of his life working as a seeri. His land, just over half-an-acre, could barely support his family of three children. With the money he had saved as a seeri, along with government grants, he switched to polyhouse farming five years ago.

A few months ago, his family moved into a new two-story house with shiny granite flooring and a spacious portico. The house cost ₹24 lakh to build.

“Two of my children are now in college. The money I’ve made has elevated my stature and earned me the respect of wealthier farmers,” he says.

Mahendar Kalwania, 28, has just had a daughter. Extended family and friends have gathered in the lawns of his massive two-storey mansion to celebrate over a simple feast comprising a sweet khichri made of daliya and red gram, poori and dal, and hot pakoras.

Dressed in a black gilet and checked navy shirt, Mahendar, a polite yet confident man, had always dreamed of joining Rajasthan’s civil services. It’s a common aspiration among the youth in this region. However, soon after he completed his master’s degree in commerce, his father passed away, and family responsibilities fell on his shoulders.

Taking up a job in the city was not an option, as he needed to stay close to home to support his family and manage their land. A few years ago, he decided to try cultivating cucumbers in a single polyhouse. Encouraged by the success of his initial efforts, he expanded the operations significantly.

Now, his family owns 24 polyhouses, and Mahendar manages them all. “Look, our annual income is Rs 2.5-3 crore a year. I have four cars, this bungalow, and a lovely daughter now. I don’t think it makes any sense for me to leave this and work a city job,” he says.

Strength in unity

The farmers of Gurha Kumawatan, buoyed by their success, have established a farmer producer company (FPC) called Agriglow. An FPC is a social enterprise that blends elements of a cooperative, like Amul, with a private limited company. It can be formed when 10 or more farmers in a region come together, with ownership and management retained by the farmers themselves. By uniting under an FPC, farmers can access larger markets, negotiate better prices, and reduce their reliance on middlemen—enhancing their incomes and ensuring greater economic sustainability.

At the helm of Agriglow is 87-year-old Devendra Raj Mehta, a retired IAS officer with a distinguished career. Mehta served as one of the longest-tenured chairmen of India’s stock market regulator, SEBI, and as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India. He also founded the NGO Jaipur Foot, which has provided artificial limbs to more than two million people with disabilities.

Driven by a passion for modern farming, Mehta and his daughter-in-law—a PhD in microbiology—ventured into polyhouse farming a few years ago, inspired by Khemaram’s success.

“What distinguishes this area is that farmers have become very modern. Farming is also a means of earning a living. Naturally, they want more income. That’s not greed, but genuine aspiration. They’ve realized that by adopting science and technology, they can increase their yields. They are now more proactive—fighting for their rights, engaging with the government, and making informed suggestions. United you stand, more powerful you are,” he says.

Under Mehta’s guidance, the FPC aims to secure greater government subsidies for polyhouse farming and explore larger national and international markets. The farmers of Gurha Kumawatan are now planning to sell their produce directly to urban consumers through e-commerce platforms and explore export opportunities to markets like Dubai.

According to Balraj Singh of SKN University, peri-urban clusters like Gurha Kumawatan—known for producing high-value horticultural crops—are best positioned for success. “These areas are close to big cities where restaurants and fast-food chains need high-quality produce like bell peppers on a large and consistent scale. Additionally, the proximity to highways allows their produce to reach ports like Mundra and Mumbai within 24 hours,” he explains.

 Pan-India possibilities

If farmers in the desert can become millionaires, can this model be replicated elsewhere?

“It absolutely can,” says Khemaram. “Farmers with better soil and water conditions can achieve even greater success than us. It requires just two things: hard work—you have to be fully committed and not treat technology like a magic wand—and courage to let go of fear. Protected farming and polyhouse cultivation work. Come visit us; we’re happy to share our experiences. There’s no other way forward for farmers seeking success.”