Uttar Pradesh, India – The Barabanki District of Uttar Pradesh prides itself on having many women farmers. They cultivate diverse crops including wheat, mustard, fenugreek, vegetables, among others. With the land being fertile, they earn reasonably well but because of following traditional farming practices, they are handicapped in terms of quality and quantity of produce, and hence, are unable to develop their farm as an enterprise.
Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust regularly provides capacity building training, awareness sessions and exposure visits to the women farmers who are part of the National Farmers Forum. In line with this, 60 farmers from Uttar Pradesh were provided with training on SRI (System of Rice Intensification) Technique. SRI is a low-water, labor-intensive method that uses younger seedlings singly spaced and typically hand weeded with special tools. This technique aims to increase the yield of rice.
Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust aims to gradually turn the farmers towards deploying new farming techniques and organic farming practices, multiply their yield, maintain the nutrients in the soil, enhance the produce quality, and use this as a pilot to cascade this technique to other farmers through training programs.
The benefits of practising modern farming techniques include increased yield (20-200%), improved resistance to environmental stresses, increased carbon sink activity while reducing emissions making it a triple win situation for agriculture, climate security, and food security.
After the training, two youth farmers—Shakuntalaben and Bahadurbhai—decided to sow paddy using the SRI Technique. The two farmers faced a lot of ridicule from their community for switching to modern farming techniques with the other farmers saying that their productivity levels would be even lesser than before. Bowing to family pressure, Bahadurbhai discontinued the SRI Technique but Shakuntalaben pushed through. It was a long process and she had to be extremely patient. Every step was new for her and she continuously needed to turn for guidance to Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust, which provided full support in terms of answering her queries after consulting agri experts and providing soil, tools, equipment, and other required inputs and calming her when the crops are delayed.
Shakuntalaben’s efforts and patience paid off when her yield jumped by 60%, silencing the farmers who predicted the worst. They then approached Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust to learn SRI and other modern farming practices.
The farmers of Uttar Pradesh started cultivating crops such as tomato and mushroom which fetched them a hefty price in the market enabling them to pay off their debts, release their mortgaged houses and fields, educate their children, and ring in an enhanced standard of living.
Boosted by the impact of modern farming techniques, Uttar Pradesh farmers have taken steps to set up a seed bank, with the support of Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust, to ensure round the year availability of quality seeds, have started using organic pesticide, are directly selling their produce to the market, are now negotiating better prices for their produce, have taken government license to grow opium, have started providing training on growing vegetables to other community members, and have coordinated with the government to obtain seeds and fertilizer and set up market linkages, with the help of Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust.
In SRI farming technique, rice plants are planted singly and spaced optimally widely to facilitate growth of roots and canopy and to keep all leaves photo-synthetically active, so this reduces the cultivation area and convincing farmers who are accustomed to using up every inch of space on their field, to leave space empty was a big challenge. In addition, the soil should be kept moist rather than continuously saturated to minimize anaerobic conditions as this improves root growth and diversity of aerobic soil organisms. However, farmers have the traditional mindset that more water will produce better crops, so steering them away from water logging and bringing them to using less water was also a big task. All these challenges were gradually overcome through holding information sessions and showcasing through videos the entire SRI success stories of farmers from other states right from the sowing to the harvesting stage.
In achieving this success, it helped to have farmers like Shakuntalaben who were keen to upgrade themselves and come out of their comfort zone and quit traditional farming practices. Knowledge and training support from Krishi Vikas Kendras and other agricultural institutions also helped. Furthermore, Lucknow Mahila Sewa Trust as an organization learned that before bringing in any new change, one needs to first prepare the farmers which involve a lot of patience. It is the first step which is difficult, but after which, everything falls into place.
Towards the sustainability of these efforts, SEWA recommends that the government should show appreciation for farmers who follow modern farming practices either in terms of cash rewards or by bringing them to international platforms. Moreover, tools and equipment libraries need to be set up through government and corporate support and academic agriculture colleges need to regularly hold awareness and informative sessions on the benefits of modern farming practices. And just as important, the government should help farmers find a dedicated market for their produce. #
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. The program has contributed to the formation of the 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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