How NGO is helping reduce poverty by converting part of small farms into orchards and vegetable gardens
In a county where most villagers have very small farms, a significant way of reducing poverty can be to convert a part of these farms into small orchards and vegetable gardens that can yield higher income and improve nutrition, while continuing farming of staple food on the remaining land as before.
Secondly, if these orchards and vegetable gardens are grown using natural farming methods, this at least starts the farmers on the path of ecologically protective farming and hopefully, as good results are seen on orchards and vegetable gardens, this can lead to a wider shift towards ecologically protective farming in due course of time, particularly if this is also facilitated by introducing other conducive arrangements such as setting up of bio-resource centers where farmers can produce organic fertilizers and pest repellants in self-reliant ways.
All this is all the more helpful in times of climate change in terms of contributing to adaptation as well as mitigation.
This in brief is the case for placing a lot of emphasis on promotion of very small orchards and vegetable gardens with emphasis on natural farming methods.
This has become a very important component of the work taken up by a voluntary organization SRIJAN in several parts of the country, which places special emphasis on benefits reaching weaker and vulnerable households and particularly women members of these households. A recent visit to one such region in Shivpuri district (Madhya Pradesh) located in Central India revealed increasing hope and enthusiasm among rural women and others as orchards start yielding fruits and a diversity of vegetables are being plucked on daily basis for use at home as well as for sale.
Pooja and Umesh are growing about 15 kinds of vegetables in a year in a multi-layer garden, a garden that combines creepers (raised upwards with the help of bamboos and sticks), smaller and bigger plants with root crops in ways that these crops are well-integrated with each other, trying to optimize the use of a small plot of land.
Pooja and Umesh continue to grow their regular crops like wheat ad groundnuts on their remaining farm as before. They hope to gradually take the natural farming methods they follow on the garden to other parts of their farm as well.
What attracts attention is the joy and pride both of them feel regarding this vegetable garden. Pooja happily goes on talking about how nice the various vegetables grown here are and taste better than what they had been purchasing from the market earlier. Nutrition has improved significantly and there is regular cash coming in from the sale of various vegetables.
In Umrikhurd village a group of women who are also members of a women farmer producer company are delighted to speak about their upcoming small orchards of guava trees. One difficulty with growing such orchards is that there is no fruit harvest and hence no income for the first two years, but with their ingenuity and hard work they have inter-cropped the younger guava plants with some legume crops which also contribute to the growth of orchards with their nitrogen fixing abilities. Rajkumari says that she has been able to market peas from this intercropping to the extent of Rs. 5000 recently, while in addition obtaining lots of peas for home consumption. Rachna has earned Rs. 3500. Other women also have similar achievements to relate. At the same time they are getting more and more familiar with natural farming methods.
In Sirsod village Rashmi Lodhi is already harvesting the fruits of the full-grown guava trees. In addition she has also added a few lemon and jackfruit trees. In fact several villagers prefer more mixed fruit tree orchards and this makes sense too in terms of having higher diversity and reducing risks. In the earlier days Rashmi also inter-planted some plants but now with full-grown trees this is not possible in her orchard, she said.
Rashmi’s orchard is indicative also of the success of a ‘convergence’ effort whereby the efforts of the government and a voluntary organization can be combined to give greater benefits to a beneficiary household. Hence in this case Rashmi’s family was able to get wage payments as well as costs of plants under a government scheme, and to this the technical and other support of SRIJAN was added. Of course, SRIJAN continues to support villagers more directly in many cases, with support from organizations like IndusInd Bank.
In another nearby orchard Badami, despite the overall very small size of her land holding, has been able to make a success of her orchard of nearly 60 guava trees.
Increased availability of fruits more regularly in the case of a household such as this with a very small land base (which would not be able to buy fruit with any regularity if it was not being grown on its own farm) certainly helps to improve nutrition.
Thus the role of these orchards and vegetable gardens is important from the point of view of making available better nutrition as well as more regular cash income.
As many women of these villages are also members of a farmer producer company, in future there are likely to be processing and value adding initiatives which can further increase the present earnings from fruit orchards and vegetable gardens.
Their usefulness increases when these are promoted with natural farming practices, adding to nutrition and health value of fruits, but in addition contributing also to improvement of soil as well to reduction of costs of farmers. Bio-resource centers that help to make available organic fertilizers and pest-repellants are being set up in several of these villages, further increasing the possibilities of the spread of natural farming. These efforts contribute both to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine, Protecting Earth for Children, A Day in 2071, and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food
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