Swapan Bagdi is a 55-year-old farmer living in the remote village of Mahutar in Labpur Block in India. Swapan is an ideal farmer and his son, too, is equally enthusiastic about farming and helps his father in exploring and implementing various new ideas and strategies. Swapan takes care of his 5 bigha land as he would of his own children. His passion for farming management was sharpened by IMSE through its varied training programs where different techniques of farming are practically taught.
Swapan also runs a small fertilizer shop. He cultivates a high-yielding variety of paddy in his land. Five years back, his son Arup Bagdi observed that paddy production was dropping at an alarming rate despite increasing the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizer. While the cost of production was jumping by leaps and bounds, the market price of paddy was dropping–leading to a disproportion in production cost and selling price.
In 2013, Swapan Bagdi came to the IMSE office and described in detail the dismal state of his farm. After patiently hearing all his problems, the program coordinator of IMSE took an art paper and sketched a strategic view of the modern farming system and its effects on nature and mankind. The program officer also invited Swapan to the seminar being organized by IMSE at Shantiniketan Krishi Bigyan Kendra. He learned a lot from this seminar and it was after attending this seminar only that he started organic farming. The outcome of implementing this new system of farming was excellent as the paddy production jumped to 18 quintals. This motivated Swapan to participate in the 4-day Agricultural Management Training Program of IMSE and now he has become an expert organic farmer of the Bipratikuri Gram Panchayat. Swapan strongly holds the opinion that the management capacity of farmers should be regularly changed and updated.
This is how IMSE helped Swapan Bagdi get a new direction in his life by learning as well as implementing new methods of farming. He has set an example for other farmers.
Established in 1973, the Institute for Motivating Self Employment (IMSE) works to strengthen grassroots level governance and effective participation of the poor, particularly women in the decision-making process. IMSE has been able to develop a network of more than 8,000 strong women groups in West Bengal, Odisha, and Jharkhand with village-level units in more than 700 villages in Eastern India. IMSE is one of the farmers’ organizations that are part of MTCP2 India.
About MTCP2
The Medium Term Cooperation Program Phase 2 (MTCP2), a five-year capacity building program supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the European Union (EU), has been implemented in 19 countries across three sub-regions—Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific—engaging 1,544 sub-national farmers organizations (FOs) with a total membership of around 22 million farmers. The funding support (total budget of $ 5 million for the whole duration of the project across 19 countries) serves as a catalytic fund that will allow FOs to enhance their capacity to be effective channels of economic services to farmers. So far, the program has contributed to the formation of a strong national platform of FOs with improved capacity to engage in policy processes and mobilize resources from mainstream agricultural development programs like extension services, credit, and pre and post-harvest facilities. The program also helped in transforming farmers’ associations into commodity-based cooperatives to strengthen the role of small-scale farmers within an inclusive and sustainable value-chain. The program is being implemented by the consortium Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and La Via Campesina (LVC).
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