Agriculture
We have worked out a package of agricultural practices finely tuned to the resource endowments of the watershed, which is accessible to the poor (low-cost) and sustainable (low-risk). We have experimented with 61 improved varieties based on indigenous seeds of 10 crops - sorghum, maize, pigeon pea, soybean, cotton, pearl millet, groundnut, black gram, green gram, chick pea and wheat - which give good yields even with low external inputs. Of these we have short-listed 38 varieties. These varieties have been developed from the local germplasm by scientists working on-location across India's drylands and are, therefore, well adapted to this challenging environment. Under our agricultural improvement programme we encourage a few carefully selected farmers to set up seed production plots for some of these varieties. SPS buys back seeds from these plots and then distributes them to farmers in the area. Among an increasing number of these farmers, we are encouraging the adoption of No Pesticide Management (NPM) agriculture.
SPS has been working out low-cost, sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural packages for small and marginal farmers in rainfed dryland areas.
Along with 7 other partner NGOs, we initiated an All-India Consortium on NPM Agriculture in 2008. The NPM idea came up as a response to the difficulties faced in Organic Certification, which is both expensive and inaccessible to small farmers. The idea of the NPM movement is to encourage farmers to grow crops without any chemical pesticides, create an identity for their produce and link these small producers to markets.
NPM agriculture emphasises building up soil fertility through appropriate management practices (such as composting and recycling of agricultural residues, use of farm yard manure, green manuring crops and bio-pesticides) with a gradual phasing out of chemical fertilizers. In Rabi 2010, two Federations of SHGs facilitated by SPS, aggregated 1000 tonnes of NPM wheat which will be marketed by Safe Harvest, the company promoted by the All-India Consortium on NPM Agriculture. Safe Harvest has guaranteed our farmers the statutory MSP at the farm-gate. This is the largest such NPM operation ever conducted in India.
A unique feature of our agriculture programme is its use of video films produced by local community resource persons trained by SPS for agricultural extension work. 60 video films have been produced so far and have proved hugely popular among farmers.
SPS Core Team members Dr. Debashis Banerji and P.S. Vijay Shankar guide the agriculture programme.
