Highlights
- Gurpreet Kaur and her husband own a small farm in rural South Australia
- She says agriculture is her passion and she doesn't shirk any manual labour
- 'I encourage more women to seek a career in farming,' she says
Gurpreet says her mother cried the first time saw her toiling away on the farm.
For the past five years, Gurpreet and her husband Dilpreet Singh have tended to their three-and-a-half-acre parcel of land in the small town of Virginia outside Adelaide in South Australia.
Today, their hothouses are home to a variety of crops like cucumber, tomato, capsicum, eggplant and zucchini.
Importantly, Gurpreet's mother is now proud of the independent life her daughter leads.
Gurpreet came to Australia from India as a student in 2009 seeking "greener pastures".
Gurpreet Kaur and her husband have a passion for farming. Source: Supplied
She studied horticulture but initially was just focused on getting permanent residency through this migration pathway.
Once she realised the "enormous potential" of the sector, she and her husband decided to migrate to a regional area to try their luck.
Today they run a profitable business that grows many types of vegetables year-round.
“Financially, we are doing very well considering it is still a small-scale operation that we hope to expand in the near future. But we are glad that our income is not dependent on the seasonal crops, and with controlled greenhouse conditions we grow crops year-round,” she says.
Gurpreet tells SBS Punjabi that if you follow your passion, money and success will follow.
Although her family was involved in farming in Punjab, India, Gurpreet says that as a woman she was neither expected nor encouraged to undertake any manual labour.
On top of the rigid family expectations, Gurpreet explains she also had to contend with judgement from members of the local community - some of whom presumed she would not last long in this male-dominated field.
Source: Supplied
She hopes her success may serve as inspiration for other migrant women to pursue a farming pathway.
“We are past the notion that women are limited in their ability in any field," she says.
"If you have a passion to succeed, you will make it no matter how unconventional the career it may be. Just move forward and never give up.”
Listen to full interview with Gurpreet Kaur in Punjabi
Ms Kaur's farming activities involve a lot of manual labour. Source: Supplied
