Two years ago, Dhanji Huniya Tadvi, a farmer in the tribal tehsil of Dhadgaon in Maharashtra’s Nadurbar district would organise his year around the kharif season from July to October. He would pray for a good rain in those months when his one-acre plot in the otherwise hilly and barren terrain would turn a little fertile, allowing him to harvest enough maize and jowar to earn about Rs 5,000 during the season.
All that changed in 2015, when Tadvi was encouraged to utilise a quarter of his land for a system of growing vegetables called trellises — a lattice of interwoven pieces of wood and metal used to support climbing plants. He used it to grow a variety of gourd vegetables, creating a verdant patch incongruous with the shades of brown around it. In one season now, from the trellis patch alone, he makes around Rs 37,000.
Tadvi has been supported in this venture by the Tata Trusts’ Central India Initiative (CInI) that has been focusing on enhancing the quality of life of tribal communities in the central Indian tribal belt for the past few years. In April 2015, the Trusts unveiled a programme called ‘Lakhpati Kisan — Smart Villages’, which aims to bring over 1 lakh households out of poverty. Its interventions in Dhadgaon, as well as in parts of Jharkhand and Gujarat, are examples of how to build a sustained improvement in agricultural production and livelihoods in difficult, drought-prone areas.
The programmes that Tata Trusts runs in Jharkhand and Gujarat have been active for a few years now and have turned many families into ‘lakhpatis’ — families that make over Rs 1 lakh a year. Through a combination of farmer education and empowerment, the programme’s key thrust is creating irreversible growth. “We hope that besides our efforts to scale it up the tribal populations themselves are able to do it without us,” says Ganesh Neelam, Head — Innovation Portfolio, Tata Trusts.
Good practices
CInI’s work in Dhadgaon, where it has effected improvements in several farmland pockets across the hilly terrain, is based on a common-sense approach, educating people first in good farm practices.
For instance, Shanti Rauhilya, a woman farmer, says that before CInI came in she never really followed a process when sowing maize or jowar for the kharif season. “I just used to fling the seeds out in bunches and then cover them up,” she says. In years when the rains were strong, the return was enough to sustain her family. But the past four years, she says, have seen reduced rainfall year on year in her region.
CInI simply instructed her in a process called system of wheat intensification (SWI) where seeds are planted more precisely, with spaces of about 20 centimetres between each grouping. “In the same amount of land I get nearly triple the yield using less than half the amount of seeds,” says Rauhilya.
Besides using SWI, she was also introduced to a new variety of maize called ‘Rajshree’, developed by the nearby Dhule Agricultural University, that returns higher yields. And before she sows the seeds now, she soaks it for some time in water so they are less susceptible to pest infections.
These are relatively simple techniques but in far-flung areas like Dhadgaon there is little access to practices being developed by local agricultural universities.
Once these techniques improved the quality of the rain-fed kharif crop, CInI encouraged the farmers to think about generating an income all year round. Concepts like trellises and relay cropping for vegetables were reintroduced but the key was also to help build structures that would conserve rainwater that would naturally run down to the planes, leaving Dhadgaon dry.
CInI helps the farmers, financially and with know how, to build storage tanks, and in some cases helps them get loans so they can buy pumps and connect water sources to farmlands.
With guaranteed water supply, more and more farmers are taking up year-round farming. The success of the vegetable trellises has come as a pleasant surprise. “We used to have to go to Shahada (the nearest big town) to buy vegetables but this season some of us are arranging to sell vegetables there. When we go to vendors they are shocked that vegetables are now being grown in Dhadgaon,” says Kalia Radtya, another farmer.
Change at the grassroots
More than increased productivity, the project has given the farmers a voice.
Women like Rauhilya, for instance, who used to often sow their land and then go off to work as labour in other places, now stay and tend it more attentively.
They are also actively involved in expanding to other methods of farming like vegetable cropping, and this has given them greater confidence.
The involvement of women as active voices in the community is crucial to CInI programmes as it eventually aims at improving quality of life choices such as education, health, safe drinking water and keeping the village open defecation free. Women are seen as key drivers in this process.
The Trusts even showcase the work of farmers who have taken risks and reaped rewards. Villagers are often taken to visit those who have made it as lakhpatis , to see how they have gone about it.
The Trusts operate on the principle that they have to start a process and stay on and monitor it so that the maximum number of people are benefitted, says Neelam. “It’s also important that the interventions are not fully funded by the Trusts. Farmers are asked for contributions, especially for hardware-related things like trellises, and we help with getting them loans,” he adds. Eventually, the Trusts hope to leverage support from the government by creating models that can be emulated.
More than increased productivity, the project has given the farmers of this region a voice
