Tribal communities in Sundargarh district
of Odisha have revived the traditional practice of growing food without
the help of chemical fertilizers and made it viable economically by
making pragmatic changes.
Nirmala Barla (40), a passionate farmer of Sundargarh district’s
Brahmanamara village, is a proud woman because she feeds her family with
a variety of safely grown food, and not just cereals grown by using
lots of chemical fertilizers that are available in the market. In her 14
acres of land, both upland and relatively plain, she grows rice, millet
and vegetables without using any inorganic fertilizer. After meeting
consumption needs of the family, she is also able to earn a bit by
selling the surplus farm produce.
Nirmala Barla (40), a passionate farmer of Sundargarh district’s
Brahmanamara village, is a proud woman because she feeds her family with
a variety of safely grown food, and not just cereals grown by using
lots of chemical fertilizers that are available in the market. In her 14
acres of land, both upland and relatively plain, she grows rice, millet
and vegetables without using any inorganic fertilizer. After meeting
consumption needs of the family, she is also able to earn a bit by
selling the surplus farm produce.
Though keeping account of income and expenditure has never been the
practice in her community, she has recently bought a power tiller and
managed to meet all expenses of her elder daughter’s marriage without
seeking a loan. Her present family of six members, after the marriage of
a daughter, makes a good living out of organic farming alone.
Nirmala is not alone in Brahmanamara. All other residents in the
village are into organic farming and the soil covering nearly 100 acres
of farmland around the village has never been fed with any fertilizer
that is inorganic. “We use our own seeds and grow them without applying
any fertilizer available in the market. We even don’t use inorganic
pesticides to save our crop,” Jagannath Kaudi, a farmer, told VillageSquare.in.
Jagannath and his wife Mahargi had a bumper oil-rich white mustard
crop last season. They have harvested 85 kg of the crop from 20 decimals
of land by adopting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method for
mustard cultivation. During implementation, they maintained a 2ft gap
between plants while planting saplings of 20 days.
Multi-cropping
Explaining how such production is possible, Jagannath says, “We
planted onion saplings between the plants. Because we face water
scarcity during summer, we used the method of mulching in case of onion.
The moisture stored in the mulch also supported other plants in the
farm. This apart, we planted maize in the farm to make opportunities for
predatory birds who can feed on pests and insects that could damage the
main crop of mustard.”
With more than 2,000 farmers from 30 villages engaged and 3,000 acres
of land covered, organic farming has now become the popular and viable
agricultural practice in Balisankara and Sadar blocks of Sundargarh
district.
Big change
Although organic farming is the tradition in parts of this region,
economic viability of it has increased in the past few years, after some
modifications in practice. “Earlier, we used to add cow dung compost to
the soil and sow the seeds in the fields,” 35-year-old woman farmer
Soharmati Topno told VillageSquare.in. “The production was very low. In some years, it was not even sufficient for our own consumption.”
The local residents have knowledge of the best practices, which
includes soil as well as climatic conditions. They only need to bring in
some modifications to it for better production as well as viability,
says Nata Kishore Mishra, chief functionary of Centre for Integrated
Rural and Tribal Development (CIRTD), a local non-profit working to popularize organic farming and promoting indigenous seed banks by farmers.
“The role of CIRTD has been to popularize organic farming in the
region by converting it into a viable economic activity,” Mishra told VillageSquare.in.
“Realizing that the production has to increase to fetch the farmers
more benefit, we have connected the farmers with experts like Subhash
Palekar, the agriculture scientist famous for his idea of zero-budget natural farming.”
Zero-budget natural farming
Stressing upon his argument that all things required for the growth
of the plant are available around the root zone of the plants, Palekar
insists that there is no need to add anything from outside in the model
of zero-budget natural farming because it means producing crops at zero
or near-zero cost.
Palekar has visited the place and offered training to farmers on
production of organic fertilizers named Jeevamruta (both in solid and
liquid forms) using cow dung, cow urine, jaggery and besan (lentil
powder) and organic pesticides using neem (Azadirachta indica) leaves,
karanja (Pongamia pinnata) leaves, calotropis leaves and garlic in
different compositions.
The farmers, mostly from the Munda and Oram tribal communities,
further modified the composition for organic fertilizers and pesticides
by using molasses rich mahua instead of jaggery as the former is
available in plenty in their vicinity and in the nearby forest.
“As mono cropping was the traditional practice, we suggested the
farmers to go for multi-cropping and adopt the SRI method in cultivation
of millets and other crops like mustard,” says Ashok Das, who
coordinates with the farmers on behalf of CIRTD.
Success from modifications
Such modifications, added with application of organic fertilizers,
have done wonders for these tribal woman farmers. “Earlier, I used to
get only one quintal of ragi (finger millet) from the two acre land near
my house. This year, with application of SRI method and organic
fertilizer, my harvest has gone up to 12 quintals. To talk about
expenditures, we gave our labor and spent less than Rs 200 on
fertilizer,” says a happy and contented Nirmala. “Apart from ragi, we
also grew several vegetables in the same field.”
The best part of the story is that the women folks prefer to grow
food crops against cash crops because meeting food and nutritional
requirements of their respective families are their priority.
Such stories are spread across the region. Anita Lakra (30) of
Gidhpahadi village got 1130 kg of rice from her one acre of medium land
by implementing the SRI method. In another one acre, she grew pulses
like black gram and vegetables like tomato, brinjal and cowpea.
“With the modifications in place, even my small piece of agricultural
land is sufficient to earn adequate livelihood for my family and to
meet expenses for the education of my two children,” Golapi Sa, 40, of
Patkijore village who pursues organic farming in nearly two acres of
land, told VillageSquare.in.
From individual to collective farming
Now the women folk of these tribal communities do not keep themselves
limited to individual farm activities in their own lands only. They
have now formed groups comprising landholders and landless poor and take
up patches of land on lease to grow variety of nutrition-rich food
crops including millets, pulses and vegetables.
This model is developed in lines of the traditional tribal system of Panch,
where a team of tribal males from the households work together for
terracing, bounding and leveling the sloped land in the hilly terrain to
make them farming ready and building small water-harvesting structures
for limited irrigation.
One of the best features of these collective models of woman farmers
is that even the landless poor member of the group has equal share of
the harvest. So, this concept has got wide acceptance and, as of now, 48
woman farmers’ collectives operate in different villages.
The group of eight woman farmers from Oram tribal community of
Budajharan village, named Oliva Women Farmers’ Collective, has received
several accolades for growing about 12 crops including brinjal, chilly,
onion, tomato, cow-pea, watermelon, beans, bitter-gourd, ladies finger,
sunflower, pumpkin and leafy-vegetable, in one season by dedicating one
row for each crop.
These groups are affiliated to the larger front of tribal communities
called Athakoshia Adivasi Ekta Manch, which fights for their rights on
forest land and the commons to expand the area under organic farming.
Need for market linkages
According to Nata Kishore Mishra, 1,500 acres of land to be farmed by
1,370 farmers from 30 clusters are to be added for organic farming
under Paramparik Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) of the government of India.
But, despite growing demand for organic farm produces, farmers of
Sundargarh are yet to fetch the benefit of it. “Even though buyers get
interested in our vegetables and other farm produces, we sell our
products at the same price the inorganic farm produces are sold at,”
says Nirmala, who is not quite aware of the real value of her crops and
vegetables grown through the organic method.
As a value-addition initiative, CITRD has started units to produce
biscuits and cakes from ragi produced by these farmers as they are in
demand for nutritional value. It also takes catering contracts to serve
food made with everything organic. A separate space is also given to the
organic farmers to sell their produces in the local market. But the
benefits are still away from the farmers as prices are the same as
normal farm produces.
“Reliable market linkages and procurement of the organic farm
produces from these woman-farmers by government agencies at a genuine
price would boost their income and mobilise more farmers to take up
organic farming and become safe food suppliers,” says Rajendra Barla,
Nirmala’s husband.
The report first appeared on July 12, 2017, at the VillageSquare.
