Improved Agriculture

Most families to be participating in the programme would have about 1 Ha of land but are unable to grow enough food for the year. As discussed in the above, the project would emphasise on the improvement of the land and water resources. Subsequent to this, one of the key interventions under this project would be to enhance productivity of the farming systems. At the basic level, there is a need to improve the productivity of the main paddy crop so as to prolong the period of food security at the households. The project would build on further by intensification and crop diversification. Availability of irrigation facilities would help in taking up crops round the year. Suitable crop combination would be introduced that would aim at optimising income and stabilizing soil nutrient status. The interventions proposed to achieve this is by introducing better varieties of seeds, help families adopt improved practices of manuring and crop protection and taking up crops more suited to terrain, soil conditions and the moisture regime. Past experiences in the area have shown that introduction of good quality seeds and adoption of improved practices helped families to enhance crop productivity by more than 100%. The key problems faced by the target community can be summed up as lack of access to knowledge:

  • of alternate use of different type of land,
  • of improved inputs and practices for productivity enhancement, and picking up actual skills to translate the knowledge into practice,
  • of the opportunities and problems to linking up will large markets.

Finally, in the current situation the families lack the self-belief that any change in their lives can be brought about by engaging in the agriculture sector. The interventions required are planning / visioning exercises, exposures to and demonstration of, new crops and technologies, handholding support to help families pick-up relevant skills, and creating linkages both forward and backward wherever required. Thus, the grant funds under this project would only be used to demonstrate new crops, better quality seeds and provide training and handholding support to the participants. Also, project funds will be used to promote basic farm mechanization in terms of sprayers/ dusters, weeders, thresher, etc. and creating missing small support infrastructure e.g. polyhouse, greenhouse from nursery, aggregation / disaggregation centers, etc. Support will be provided to create sustainable sources of organic matter, which needs to be regularly applied to improve the condition of the land in the project area.