Project Report for Chives Farming
Before you begin chives farming, create a realistic business plan based on your local market, climate, and cultivation costs. Sharda Associates provides CA-certified, bankable project reports beginning at ₹2,999, comprising investment estimates, financial predictions, crop planning, and bank loan paperwork.
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What a Real Farming Village in Manipur Got Right
In Top Leikai, a village in Imphal East, Manipur, a shift to chives farming became successful enough that neighbouring villages started adopting it too — documented in an academic study published in the Economic and Political Weekly. That’s a genuinely useful starting point for anyone considering this crop in India, because it points to exactly why chives has worked for small farmers in specific pockets of the country, and exactly where its limits are.
Why Chives Worked in Manipur
The study identified a specific combination of factors behind the crop’s local success: inputs that could be sourced locally rather than depending on external supply chains, suitability for small farm sizes, and a requirement for only basic tools and skills — genuinely accessible for small and marginal farmers rather than requiring heavy capital investment. Chives also generates fast income, with a short gap between harvests, and a single planting can be harvested repeatedly for up to 10 years, giving farmers a long-running, low-replanting-cost income source once established.
What Chives Actually Is
Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) is a perennial herb in the onion family, grown for its hollow, mild onion-flavoured leaves used as a garnish and seasoning. In India, it’s cultivated in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, hilly parts of the Northeast (Manipur being a genuine, documented example), and to some extent in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. It’s a relatively low-maintenance crop, tolerant of a range of soil types and temperatures, preferring full sun and well-drained soil but able to handle partial shade and even mild frost.
The Honest Limitation Worth Knowing Upfront
The same academic study that documented chives farming’s success in Manipur also flagged its central constraint clearly: the lack of industrial use limits how far this crop can expand, and domestic demand — rather than any large-scale processing or export industry — is what sustains the market. This means chives works well as a stable, supplementary income crop for small and marginal farmers, particularly where land holdings are limited, but it isn’t positioned as a large-scale, high-volume commercial crop the way something like potato or onion is.
Growing Chives Commercially
Chives is typically harvested about 60 days after sowing, and a pure stand can yield approximately 33,000 kg per hectare. After each harvest, farmers cut the stalks and flowers while leaving 3-5 cm of stalk in the ground, allowing the plant to regrow and be harvested again — this is what enables the multi-year harvest cycle that makes chives economically attractive relative to its low input needs. In the plant’s early stages, removing flower buds helps direct energy toward stalk growth rather than flowering, improving your harvestable yield.
The Perishability Problem You Must Plan Around
This is the single most operationally important fact about chives farming: it’s a highly perishable crop that should reach market within 24 hours of harvest, extendable to 48 hours only with refrigeration. This isn’t a minor logistics detail — it fundamentally shapes where you can realistically sell your crop. If you don’t have same-day or next-day access to a market, or cold storage/refrigerated transport, your realistic buyer base narrows considerably, regardless of how well your crop grows.
Where the Real Demand Is Coming From
Chives sits within India’s broader exotic vegetables and herbs category, where market demand has reportedly grown substantially in recent years, driven by hotels, QSR chains, and health-conscious urban consumers using it in salads, garnishes, and international cuisine. Only a small share of polyhouse growers currently cultivate exotic vegetables like chives, and open-field cultivation of this category remains limited — meaning there’s real, growing demand concentrated in specific urban and hospitality markets, even though the crop’s overall industrial/processing use remains limited, as the Manipur study noted.
Two Very Different Market Paths
Based on where you’re located and who you can realistically sell to, chives farming in India tends to follow one of two distinct paths:
Path | Who It Suits | Realistic Market |
Small-scale, local/domestic sale | Small and marginal farmers in traditional growing regions (Northeast hill states, HP, J&K) | Local markets, household consumption, regional demand — modest but stable income, low industrial dependency |
Premium, urban/hospitality-focused | Farmers near metro areas with polyhouse or protected cultivation capability | Hotels, QSR chains, modern urban kitchens — higher-value but requires proximity to market and cold-chain logistics |
Trying to pursue the premium urban path without proximity to a major city or reliable refrigerated logistics is a common, avoidable mismatch — the perishability constraint makes distance a genuine limiting factor, not just a cost consideration.
Should You Grow Chives Commercially?
If you’re a small or marginal farmer in one of India’s traditional chives-growing regions, this crop offers a genuinely accessible, low-capital way to generate stable, repeated income from a modest plot — the Manipur experience is a real, documented example of this working at village scale. If you’re considering it as a premium crop for hotel or urban restaurant supply, your success depends heavily on being close enough to that market to manage the 24-48 hour perishability window, which likely means you need either a peri-urban location or genuine cold-chain capability — without one of those two things, this specific market path isn’t realistic no matter how well your crop grows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Primarily in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, hilly regions of the Northeast (including a documented successful case in Manipur), and to some extent in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.
Up to 10 years from one planting, since farmers cut the stalks while leaving a small base in the ground, allowing the plant to regrow for repeated harvests rather than requiring annual replanting.
It can provide stable, supplementary income, particularly for small and marginal farmers, as documented in Manipur's Top Leikai village. However, an academic study of that case specifically noted that limited industrial use constrains how much this crop can expand commercially, since demand is primarily domestic rather than export or processing-driven.
Within 24 hours ideally, extendable to 48 hours with refrigeration — this perishability makes proximity to your buyer or reliable cold-chain logistics a critical planning factor, not an afterthought.
Yes, particularly from hotels, QSR chains, and health-conscious urban consumers as part of the broader exotic vegetables and herbs trend, though this demand is concentrated in specific urban and hospitality markets rather than being a mass consumer product.
A pure stand can yield approximately 33,000 kg per hectare, with the crop typically ready for first harvest around 60 days after sowing.
Profitability is determined by output, market prices, production expenses, irrigation, post-harvest processing, transportation, and access to premium buyers such as hotels, restaurants, and supermarkets. Returns can vary depending on geography and market demand.
Yes, Sharda Associates provides CA-certified, bankable Project Reports for chives farming that include specific investment estimates, cultivation costs, financial projections, and loan-ready documentation. We have provided over 45,500 project reports in India, beginning at ₹2,999.