Manpreet Singh, a 34-year-old farmer from Rahim Ke Uttar village in Ferozepur, does not look at his five-acre farm as five acres, but as 40 kanals, each with its own earning potential. By combining vegetable nurseries, paddy and Basmati nurseries, short-duration crops and carefully planned planting cycles, he estimates that his farming model generates Rs 6 lakh-Rs 7 lakh per acre annually.His approach rests on a simple principle: make the same piece of land earn through successive crop cycles instead of waiting for a single harvest. By aligning crop duration with planting windows and market demand, he combines nursery production with vegetable cultivation and short-duration paddy and Basmati crops on the same land. He estimates that a single kanal can generate Rs 85,000-Rs 90,000 or more annually — comparable to what a farmer might earn from an acre under conventional wheat-paddy cultivation.A postgraduate in History who also has experience working in the courts, Manpreet began farming alongside his father in 2007, when he was just 15. Initially, the family cultivated vegetables, wheat and paddy on leased land.Before taking up farming full-time, he worked as a volunteer and social worker. In 2015-16, he was associated with a Nehru Yuva Kendra project against drug abuse, earning Rs 2,500 a month for a year.His shift towards nursery cultivation began in 2020, when he started raising onion seedlings on just 10 marlas, or one-sixteenth of an acre. As demand grew, he expanded to one kanal, then two and four kanals, eventually scaling up vegetable nursery production and cultivation to around four acres at different times of the year.Today, he raises seedlings of onion, garlic, cauliflower, several varieties of chillies, including long chilli, capsicum, pumpkin, bottle gourd, bitter gourd and cucumber. He also cultivates garlic on one acre and grows sugarcane for jaggery production as well as for raising seedlings.Also Read | Farmers’ Column: BBA grad turns 2 failed wheat sowings into Rs 1 crore from vegetablesHe has around 250 customers, mainly farmers who prefer buying ready-to-transplant seedlings rather than maintaining their own nurseries.Story continues below this ad“The key is timing — and making the same land serve more than one purpose,” he says.Making every season countManpreet’s nursery operations follow the agricultural calendar. From January, he raises vegetable seedlings under protected conditions in low tunnels. By March, when farmers are ready to transplant their crops, the seedlings are sold. The land is then rested for about a month before being brought back under cultivation.Most vegetable nursery cycles take 30-35 days, depending on the variety, while vegetable crops generally take 2.5 to four months. Onion seedlings require 60-70 days. A second nursery season begins in July and August and continues till December.Paddy and Basmati nurseries form another important part of his model. He uses around 2.25 acres for nursery production, raising seedlings of 15-16 paddy and Basmati varieties. By using the same land twice for nursery production, he says, the area utilised for nurseries effectively reaches around 4.5 acres during the paddy season, supplying seedlings for approximately 400-600 acres of farmland.Story continues below this adOnce the nursery cycle is over, the same 2.25 acres are brought under short-duration paddy or Basmati cultivation during the same season.His calculations illustrate how the model works. An acre contains 160 marlas, of which around 140 are used for paddy seedling production, with the remaining 20 marlas reserved for partitions separating different varieties. At an estimated expenditure of Rs 700 per marla and sales of around Rs 1,500 per marla, he calculates a margin of Rs 800 per marla per cycle.Repeated nursery cycles, he estimates, can generate around Rs 2.25 lakh per acre. The subsequent cultivation of short-duration paddy or Basmati can add another Rs 60,000-Rs 65,000. Over a period of more than five months, from nursery production to paddy harvesting, he puts the combined returns at around Rs 3 lakh per acre.By comparison, he estimates that conventional paddy cultivation generates Rs 60,000-Rs 65,000 per acre after expenses.Story continues below this adDiversification beyond nurseriesThe returns vary according to the crop, input costs and market prices. Garlic, for instance, can generate revenue of Rs 10 lakh-Rs 12 lakh per acre when prices are favourable, leaving a potential net income of Rs 8 lakh-Rs 10 lakh after expenses, he says.Cucumber offers another example of how he uses shorter crop cycles. Three kanals under cucumber can generate Rs 70,000-Rs 80,000 after expenses in a crop cycle lasting 70-80 days.“We plan almost the entire year. We use the land whenever it becomes available and choose a crop suitable for that period, while ensuring that the land gets some rest between cycles,” he says.His operations employ around 12 people, including three permanent workers, with additional labour hired according to requirements. He also uses drip irrigation on most of his land to conserve water.Story continues below this adAlongside crop diversification, he has built a dairy enterprise, keeping around 10-12 Murrah buffaloes valued at Rs 25 lakh-Rs 30 lakh. Here, too, he says, the emphasis is on maintaining quality rather than simply expanding the herd.His farming model recently earned him the Sardar Ujagar Singh Dhaliwal Award from Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana.For Manpreet, the larger lesson is that profitability need not depend on owning more land. It can also come from planning more carefully how existing land is used across seasons. “The lesson is not necessarily to own more land, but to find more ways of earning from the land one already has,” he says.His next goal is to double his income from the same land over the next few years by adopting newer farming techniques.