Section VI - Subhash Sharma of Yavatmal, 600 tonnes of Vegetables / year in the hotbed of farmer suicides

The Ray of Hope in an atmosphere of Suicides. Optimisation and Economics amidst the crisis

Datye had been quoting to us very often the Model of Subhash Sharma for Vegetables and Pulses. We had been wanting to go there for sometime but was not happening because of my mother's ill health. Finally myself, Vatsala and Vamsi visited Subhash Sharma's plot (s) in Feb 2006 to understand what exactly happens in his plot(s).

The Visit report in detail would be put up in this section later. But a broader understanding of his model is given in this section for all of us to understand the same. Subhash Sharma learnt the Natural Farming methods from Dabholkar and is also a contemporary of Subhash Palekar in this. With no external inputs and all the inputs prepared, generated, grown, cultivated within the plot, it is a very good model.

The Model:

i) He has two 30 Acre farms. But the calculations shown are for a single farm
ii) 250 Days of assured work agreement per worker = 250 X Rs.60 = Rs. 15000 / year
iii) 2 workers / acre and hence it is Rs. 15000 x 2 = Rs.30,000 / acre labour payment
iv) Output = 20T of vegetables / acre / year
He makes an agreement based on estimate of the production cost, yield and minimum sale price. Any additional income and corresponding profits are shared on an agreed basis between the farmer and the worker (presumably on 50%-50% basis). A summary of the estimate is presented below.

Refer the chart for an understanding of the Economics of his farming

The average wage per worker per day works out to Rs. 56.2 / day this is almost the same as the EGA wage.

It so happened that when he was producing this sort of an output in his first farm some of the people in the neighbourhood questioned him about the replicability of the output, so as a challenge he took up another 30 acre plot about 3 years back and matched the output of his earlier farm. Unfortunately we still dont have anyone else who has relpicated his success story as it is absolute optimisation technique. On an average daily about 3 tonnes of Vegetables leave for the market every day from both of his farms

One more remarkable thing about his farming is that there is not even a single rupee of external funding and he runs it like a proper enterprise. In fact since Vidharba is known for growing cotton and the resultant crisis he tried growing cotton in a small piece of his land and achieved great success.

For more details pls. revisit this section once again.

Section V - Enough of Problems - An inspiring tribal called Anna Renke and our visit to his farm in Solapur

The Suryamandal

From Problem to Inspiration

The previous 3 sections dealt in some detail about the problems. Moving onto some action and inspiration, this section contains in detail about the visit of ours to his farm in Solapur. This report was compiled by Arun

Solapur Visit Report
December 4-5th 2004

Overview

It’s been some time we wanted to visit Mr.Renke’s Organic Farm in Solapur. This visit was considered crucial to get a practical insight on how we could go further on the Magadi Project. Finally this became fruitful on December 4th 2004, seven of us got this unique opportunity to really see how Mr.Renke has been so successful in his Organic Farming method even in a totally arid region of Solapur, where the rain fall is as low as 400 mm.

In this report we will try to document what we observed about Mr.Renke’s unique organic farming technique and also lay down the crucial future directions for Magadi project.

Background to Mr.Renke

Mr.B.K.Renke, who is basically from Maharasthra, belongs to nomadic tribal people. Like many other tribal landless nomadic people he also migrated to big city in search of livelihood. After spending years in one of the most subsistence living environments of Mumbai slums, he realized that just like other migrated Villagers he has also fallen pray to the false dreams of Urban materialism. That’s when he decided that given an opportunity and use of right agricultural techniques migration of poor people from villages especially with a livelihood need can be avoided. Since then he has devoted himself for more than 10 years in practicing and mastering his own style of Organic farming technique. His objective is to achieve a greater yield in agriculture for self-sustenance of the poor villagers living in extreme arid conditions. This needs to be achieved at a low cost, with minimal water usage and better use of wasteland. Also a natural way of enriching the soil nutrients needs to be designed instead of using Fertilizers, which has eroded the soil nutrition to extreme levels since the beginning of Green revolution. A natural way to control pests also needs to be devised instead of using pesticides.

Organic Farming Technique as followed by Mr.Renke

His model example for Organic Farming requires 10 Guntas of Land, this can be arid wasteland with minimum of 1000 CC/year/Gunta water entitlement. This is one fifth of water required when compared with conventional green agriculture method used for sugarcane. And much much less than the quantity of water used in flood irrigation methods, which are extensively used in conventional Paddy cultivation. Idea is to convert maximum of the sunlight fallen on this land to Photosynthesis.

The process begins with the crucial initial step of enriching the Soil. With plant roots usually going a few feet down the soil, importance of the nutrients availability in the topsoil is very important. Water holding capacity of the Soil is also very important. A natural way to induce this nutrient level first time when the soil is prepared and then to sustain it as we use it is very crucial. This is at the heart of the organic farming technique practiced by Mr.Renke. Ingredient that is prepared for this purpose is called Humus. Recipe for preparing humus requires 10 tons of biomass, which can be aggregated either from the nearby land or procured from elsewhere for the initial requirement. In order to sustain the nutrient level of the Soil as it is used, it is important that the some quantity of the biomass grown on the land is returned back to the soil. This is possible since not all the parts of the plant are eventually used as crop. Preparation of humus can be either done in a central place, which then is carried to the land where it needs to be used or it can be prepared at the place of use. Losses will be minimal if the humus is prepared at the place of use, but then this comes at an expense with more effort involved. Estimated time period for creating the Humus is around 2-3 months, once the Humus is ready then the topsoil is prepared by using the following recipe. For every 1 square foot land 4 liters of Humus is mixed with 4 liters of soil. This soil requires to be watered for a while such that the typical breakdown phase of biomass completely happens. We also saw a pit type humus preparation where in the entire biomass was put in a huge tank and then the biomass was covered with a layer of soil.

We could appreciate the importance of the Humus and initial Soil preparation by listening to Mr.Renke, but however we failed to get a detail insight of how to prepare the Humus step by step. This necessitates a much-detailed exploration of the steps involved in Humus preparation in the Magadi Project. Such that when the initial demo implementation of Organic farming is ready, then we require a knowledge repository using that farmers should be able to easily implement this technique.

After the soil preparation the next task is to prepare the layout for the crops in ten Guntas, for this Mr.Renke has his own unique creative technique. One Gunta of land could be also taken for construction of a small hut/house for the very poor people who might as well as in the need of a shelter along with livelihood needs. This also helps in giving a close attention to the Organic farming technique practiced. A typical layout of the 10 Guntas Land is given below, here only 8 Guntas of land used for crop with other two Guntas being used for House and Cattle rearing.

The Suryamandal

SuryaMandal is a creative way to bring together different crops in a circular shape such that there is a better use of space and as well as maximum sunlight is being utilized. SuryaMandal will require one Gunta of land, where in a circle of 5 M radius is drawn from the center. As shown above SuryaMandal has three layers in addition to the corners being utilized for growing other crops in a triangular region. In the outermost & innermost layers we could see Banana, Papaya & turmeric being grown. The typical yield in this kind of arrangement is being mentioned as Turmeric 2 Kg/Plant, which will materialize to Rs.4500/annum/gunta after 9 months. Papaya 120 Kg/plant/year and Banana 65 Kg/Plant. In the middle layer Coriandal, Dhanya and other small crops are grown. Mr.Renke did mention that the central place in the SuryaMandal could be made use for taking bath, by which this water is made use for the plants. Corners were made use to grow Garlic. SuryaMandal has a creative approach, but however we did have questions on the availability of Sun light for the Inner layer of plants, also for the small plants grown in the middle layer. But Mr.Renke did confirm that sufficient light is available during the noontime, and this arrangement also helps in retaining the crucial water from evaporating in these arid regions. Dr.Srinivas did mention that in arid regions evaporation loss is very high, and may be this method might just help to prevent this, which might be the secret behind less need for water. In another experimentation land in the making, we could see how the groundwork is done for the SuryaMandal, in the center of the one Gunta Land a wooden plug is nailed. To this plug a thread is tied whose length is 5 meters, then using this the circle is drawn. Then at one-meter distance each inner circle is drawn from the outer circle. This procedure gives a perfect Geometry for the Suryamandal.

In the adjacent Gunta to SuryaMandal, we could see an interesting combination of mixed crop being grown. We could see Jute, Chilli, and Radish as the main crop but in between we could see Marigold, Datura, Tulasi, which acts as natural pesticides. Also we could see half gunta of this land being used for growing Garlic and Palak. Mr.Renke did mention that to arrive at specific combination of these plants takes time and experimentation, since they need to live symbiotically.

Whole ten Guntas of Land is having a Green fencing, these plants usually are those which after initial nurturing they grow on their own without much regular watering. They not only protect the land from pasturing animals but also act as source for biomass and as pasture to Cattle & goats.
We could see Cactus, Marigold etc being used for green fencing.

The next two Guntas are being used for growing Onion. We could see on the floor many Maze leafs, since the last crop grown in this area was Maze. As per Mr.Renke this is what he calls giving back to the land what we take from it, this helps in sustaining the nutrients of the soil. Ash generated in domestic usage is being applied to plants for the supply of potash. We had questions related to the choice of Onion as this was considered as a crop which requires lot of water, but Mr.Renke told water is supplied only five days once, because of the good water holding capacity of the soil this seems sufficient. Two different patters were seen in the way Onion was grown, one in a zig zag fashion and other in a plain rows. Again water is supplied using pipes, this is the procedure followed throughout. Water is supplied from tank to a strategically located outlet in the center of four Guntas, this outlet is used to supply water to those four Guntas. Such outlets need to be constructed initially once the Soil is ready. Onion yield is estimated at 700 Kg per Gunta for 5 months. Previous crop Maze had a yield of 1 quintal per Gunta. Mr.Renke also mentioned that he is able to grow Basmati rice & wheat with a yield of 16 Kg per Gunta.

In the next Gunta we could see a commercial perfume plant called Vetevera is being grown. This plant, which generated close to Rs.200 per plant revenue, helps the farmer to buy his other needs not supplied from the ten Guntas land.

Next Gunta is being used for growing Fruits. Here we could see Banana, Guava, and other fruits being grown. Remaining other two Guntas are being used to generate biomass, which is then used across the ten Guntas. Mr.Renke mentioned that to maintain the nutrient level of soil of 10 Guntas typically 1/3rd i.e., around 3 Guntas needs to be used for supplying the biomass. Some of the plants grown can be of use and some may not be of commercial use.

As per Mr.Renke this 10 Guntas of land could supply the livelihood for a family of five people with a minimum water requirement of 1000 liters/year.

1 Gunta is 1/40th of an Acre = 100 sq.m or 33X33 sq.ft or 1089 sq.ft.

Section - IV - A Farce Called "E-Choupal" and the resulting Food insecurity

Globalisation of the Grain Business and the resultant food insecurity of the nation

About 2 1/2 years back itself Sainath had spoken about the "Starving and Stunting of India" as to what it does to the nutrition security of the nation and where we are heading by embracing the policies of the Bretton-Woods Institutions. Read the article for the complete details

http://www.rupe-india.org/36/app2.html.

and when we read the article written by Brunda Karat recently about the food insecurity artificially created by the Globalised Political Class led by a Minister for Agriculture who is more interested in running a Cricket Board than look at the suicides of farmers.

http://www.hindu.com/2006/06/06/stories/2006060602600800.htm

The mess in the Food and Agricultural policy of the present Government caught between the Globalised forces who represent the constituency that doesn't vote and the political party which needs to get votes from the voting marginalised who need PDS for their survival is presented in this article. Read this

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060911&fname=Pawar+%28F%29&sid=1

E-Choupal - the Death of the PDS and food security and the rise of the "Aashirwad Atta"

If you do a Google search on the E-Choupal you would get 1000's of articles and rave reviews on this initiative by a company known for killing people with tobacco products. It is now being replicated by the IIM Bangalore (where recently e-choupal was hailed as the best thing that could have happened under the sun) at a place near Bangalore. But what I am presenting here is the other side of the rave reviews beginning with this article again by a business magazine.

http://www.india-today.com/btoday/netexcl/net20060430/7.html

We need to understand this to understand the intervention that we are doing. Blood boils at the way the government callously goes about its policies. Also these show that the scarcity of the foodgrains are artificially created because of the hoarding by the "e-choupals" and increasing the prices & most of all Business today commenting on the food insecurity!! The best thing that describes the scenario is the paragraph " Soon after the first tender for import of 0.5 million tons of wheat was contracted with the Australian Wheat Board (AWB), the international prices of wheat went on an upward swing. From an average of $131 a tonne, the AWB managed to bag the contract at $178.5 a tonne - an increase of 56 dollars a tonnes. Industry analyst, however, propose that India is deliberately weakening its bargaining position in WTO by unnecessarily resorting to wheat imports against zero duty and relaxed quarantine norms when the granary is full.

Meanwhile, the first consignment of the contracted wheat imports from Australia arrived at Chennai in the last week of April. Interestingly, in the first week of March when wheat harvesting begins in central India, AWB was buying wheat directly from farmers, at a price much lower than what it supplies to India ( one can easily replace AWB with ITC and the e-choupal initiative and think of the Aashirwad attas that are flooding the Indian market). In other words, while the government is willing to pay foreign companies an equivalent of approximately Rs 9,500 per tonne (including all costs), it allows the same companies to purchase from within the country at a much lower price - around Rs 7,000 per tonne."

What an Irony?

So what is the main grouse against these initiatives?

Even given that I have a bias against "Corporates" and their CSRs, the following are some of the blatant misdemeanours:

• The first problem is again the farmer / property-centric nature of this program with the landless again left in the lurch

• Such initiatives at some places are also implemented on a contract farming basis which does not care even for the sovereignty of the farmers or their entitlements or empowerments, in short if I were to coin a new term it is "bonded farming" akin to "bonded labourers"

• This is again resulting in the undermining of the government and the rising of the private profits in a key social sector of the nation. You can draw any number of paralells in the nation today of how these private first start on the doles of the Government and then become larger than life to then undermine the government and with it the nearly 70% of the population. We can see the parallels like:
a) The Pharmaceutical sector resulting in the Government bringing in TRIPS into the nation to facilitate "R&D" within the pharma industry
b) We can see in the recent Supreme Court ruling wherein the Court says the Government has no role to play in the Private Educational Institutions
c) We can see this happen to our Health Systems with the increasing influence of the corporate hospitals like the "Apollo Hospitals" or the "Narayana Hrudayalayas" drafting a Health policy promoting Medical Tourism (note it is Medical and not health) so that an American can come to India to have his/her Ayurvedic Massage in Kerala whereas 3000 children can die in this nation of preventable diarrhea. These Apollos and the Wokhardts in turn undermine the Primary Health Care system of India

• The marginalised are again left to the mercy of the hoarders who can sell their wheat atta in the open market in the up-market areas of the cities under the brand names of "Aashirwad Atta" where there is the population with a buying capacity. These marginalised ( also read the landless labourers) who depend on the PDS for their foodgrain supplement have to now contend with lesser grain distribution through the PDS.

• The final problem is the fatalistic thinking of the middle upper-middle class whose opinions are generated by the globalised media like Times of India. We the middle class get swayed by such initiatives which talk about "better" pricess to farmers than the Government, who get swayed about "better" medical facilities by the Apollos. We think in a fatalistic way that at least the farmer is getting that much better price. While nobody might deny that the farmer is getting a price we need to ask at what cost? Are we not robbing Peter to pay Paul? And if only we were not to be fatalistic we would have at least demanded from the Government from giving a better MSP ( Minimum Support Price) which it was perfectly capable of as it is illustrated by Brunda's article in which Government woke up very late and then started offering better prices to the farmers but it was too late. Since we think "buying" works for us middle class in the cities we think it works for everyone. We also think that a technological fix like "e-choupal" is the best solution whereas forget ( or made to forget by the media) that these are some of the most exploitative instruments











Prasanna

Section III - National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 and its Problems

NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE ACT, 2005

This is one of the very few progressive, pro-people legislations alongwith the Right to Information Act 2005 that the present UPA Government has brought in. Inspite of the pressures by the Globalised sections of the present government who consider this as "Dole" and "unsustainable" whereas dont think that giving customs duty concessions to the industry, setting up of Special economic Zones (SEZs) for the"exporters", free allotment of land to "Multispeciality private corporate hospitals" as a Dole. But because of the pressure brought in by the Left parties inside and outside of the Parliament and because of the tremendous work done by the "Right to Food" camapaign within this country, the government had to finally listen to the popular will and bring in this act.

The details of the Act can be found at http://nrega.nic.in

The main difference this time around is that they have not put any criteria of BPL for enrolling oneself. Also for the timebeing specific districts have been identified for this but if you go to the site on the right side they have mentioned by the time of next year they would be extending the same to the whole of the Country

But there are specific problems from the previous Employment Guarantee Assistance Schemes(EGA) which are repeated into this as well. All those Rozgar Yojanas like the Jawahar Rozgar Yojanas and its brothers and sisters were not effective because of the specific problems. Some of them are:

1. Most of the work identified are civil or construction related. Since civil construction like a bus shelter or a complex in the name of MLA means big cuts and big money from the contractors and also something tangible that can stay in the name of the MLA and he can be "seen" to be doing "developmental" work

2. Most of these works were subcontracted out, the contractors would use Heavy Machinery like JCB defeating the whole purpose of the Rozgar Yojanas

3. Since it used to be only civil construction and other such activities (drainage systems, desilting etc., ) with which the labourers have no sense of belonging or ownership or stake in this, any labour was the same for them and the more the delay in executing the same, the more the labour got from EGA and hence the works used to not get completed on time

4. Since there is no challenge, no new learning, no capacity building or asset creation for the labourers, they treat this as just labour and efficiency comes down

5. Also there is the cultural angle. If we look at the rural unemployed today, they are also the farmers who have done distress selling of their lands and then become landless and unemployed and if they were to be asked to do the drainage work or the hard labour of construction they wouldnt be wanting to do in their own village as it would be below their dignity to do the same. It wouldn't matter that the same person migrated to city and worked as a peon as it would be an "izzatwali' job. This resulted in under utilisation of the funds. For the same reason that there is large scale migration to the cities/ towns by the male folk and the women had to do all these civil work which is considered "unsuitable" for them the utilisation goes further down. If you were to see the present NREGA site there is a news item which says that 7 M JOB CARDS ISSUED, BUT 4.3 M MAKE IT ( http://rural.nic.in/news/0308062006.pdf) precisely for some of the above reasons

6. Even the little agricultural related work that gets done is on so-called "watershed programs" whose results cant be seen for nearly 10-15 yrs and even the results that occur are again beneficial to the land holding farmer!!

7. In addition to the above the Rozgar Yojanas were divided and compartmentalised into SC/ST beneficiaries scheme, watershed scheme, etc., and also the total money is being split by the number of the ward members of the Panchayat (12-13) resulting in fragmented funding.

8. If you look at the guidelines document it again specifies some of the above mentioned works only (http://nrega.nic.in/Nrega_guidelines.pdf) and nothing has been learnt from the previous mistakes. But luckily this time the civil society is much more vibrant and upto the challenge and mobilising the community on the correct utilisation of the NREGA from a Rights Approach with Rajasthan topping the list thanks to the pioneering work that MKSS and others are doing in combining RTI and NREGA with no less than the most Globalised Citizen of the country Montek Singh Ahluwalia grudgingly acknowledging that "YOJANAO KE KIYANVAYAN MEIN RAJASTHAN AVVAL:MONTEK" ( http://rural.nic.in/news/0325072006.pdf).

THIS PROGRAM ENVISAGED IS TO UTILISE THE NREGA TO BUILD CAPACITIES OF THE LANDLESS LABOURERS IN AGRICULTURE AND ALLIED SERVICES AND AT THE SAME TIME CREATE ENTITLEMENTS FOR THEM SO THAT THEY CAN HAVE A STAKE AND OWNERSHIP.

Section II - The "non-existence" of landless agri. labourers in the demography of Government programs

The Property Centric nature of Government Programs

Whenever the Government conceives of any program for agriculture it is always property-centric. There is also not much effort put in to create awareness to the farmers about the same and one should be an enlightened khata (patta) holder of a piece of land for you to avail of these benefits. Recently somebody was telling that by the time they got the information, the department people said that the beneficiaries have been already disctributed the benefits and they have to wait for the next batch!! What this means is that only the rich and influential people who have anyways access to everything also have access to these programs. The marginalised or the resource poor farmer doesn't get any information at all. Let alone the benefits.

The non-existence of the Landless Agricultural labourers in the demogaphy of the Government

Now let us come to the plight of the landless agricultural labourers or the resource poor ones. These are the people who are dependent on the work that they get from the land holding farmers. If there is good monsoon and all the other conditions are favourable these people get work and their livelihood gets somewhat taken care of but otherwise the only option left to them is migration in search of labour and the resultant proliferation of the cities / towns and the creation of slums and their associated health problems. Some of them also fighting for their land rights as well. For nearly 58 yrs their struggles have yielded very minimal results.

So on the one hand we have the small and the marginal farmers not able to fully utilise their lands and on the other we have the landless people who have been fighting for their land rights without any sort of entitlement. But the Government keeps coming up with one program or the other which is property-owner centric. Some examples:

• Suppose there is a drought in that area and the Government declares that the area is drought prone, you are entitled for "Drought Relief" if you are a khata (patta) holding farmer as has happened to the Bangalore Rural District this year(2006) with no rains

• Supposing there is floods and your crops are washed away then again you are entitled for flood relief if you are a khata (patta) holding farmer as has happened in Gulbarga and other districts this year

• The Crop Insurance schemes are for land holding farmers

• This year Karnataka Government announced that it would extend farm loans at 4 % and again it is for land holding farmers

• Many of you might have heard of the so called "Health Insurance" scheme started with much fanfare by the Karnataka government called as Yashaswini. Even this was property centric!! For more on this you can read my blog http://hippp.blogspot.com

• In our Magadi Intervention as part of our mainstreaming efforts we tried to involve the Horticulture Department in our efforts and we were surprised to know the many schemes that were there in the Government to go organic. There is a Rs. 30000 for construction of Vermi-Compost pit, Rs. 8000 for converting your farm in organic etc., etc., So we all got enthused that we could use the same for our intervention, so the community leader Ravi who is coordinating the three plots in Magadi went and met this Horticulture person who was helping us out but he came back disappointed and disillusioned because that fellow was not ready to extend any support without him bringing the Patta of the land which was in the Landholder's name and not in the name of the 5 women who were working on the land

As you can see from the above for the Government one simply doesn't exist if one doesn't have some property or the other. This brings us to the only instrument available for a landless agricultural labourer in times of distress is to register himself as an unemployed person in the village and ask for Employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( NREGA), the ONLY instrument provided by the government for such people in distress....