I’m Gurraj Singh Virk and I’m a resident of Surgapuri village (District Faridkot). In my family we are 7 members (my wife, 3 daughters and 2 sons) including me. In the beginning I started farming cotton in 1990, but soon after that I quit the idea of continuing cotton farming because of increasing debt and cotton plant diseases. Then I started sugarcane farming and after that I also gave chance to paddy farming, but I faced failure in that too. But then also I never gave up and in 1983 with the support of Horticulture Department, Faridkot and Punjab Agriculture University, I started Kinnow Farming.

During these years I lost two most important persons in my life- my father and my mother; my whole family was in great shock. But at that time, I never surrendered my feelings and always came up as a strong father and husband to my family, so that, they can recover soon and I continued my farming and experimentations on farming implements.

After some time my kinnow orchards started bearing fruits and it was a time of celebration for me and my family. Good Days were returned. I never misused the money and always utilized them in a better way. I expanded my orchards and got installed a deep tube well so that I can start paddy farming again. I also planted grapes in 2.5 acres of land and grapes orchard gave me a good revenue. But soon after that there was a termite attack on the grapes orchard and I have to uproot the whole orchard to prevent the further loss to other orchards and expanded my kinnow farm.

I always wanted to implement modern farming technique for efficient farming. I implemented drip irrigation system, mulching technique and high density farming as well. To make my work easier I also designed a spray pump for effectively spraying organic pesticides and a machine to cut and give proper shape to the trees. Other than this I also designed a machine for cleaning and grading the kinnows, which cleans 2 ton of kinnows in one hour and the total expenditure in cleaning two tons of kinnow only costs Rs. 125. In future I want to continue and expand my work and also inspire other farmers towards horticulture.