Section - XVI - What is in it for the Land-holding Farmer?

What is in it for the Farmers?

Naturally we would all be confronted with the question that why should the farmers be part of this Collective? What is in it for the farmers to become part of this? What is the guarantee that they would still stick on as a collective and not go back to their exploitative ways. The Answer lies in a mixture of carrot and stick that is part of this initiative

1. For 20 resource poor households it is necessary to come to an understanding with land owning farmers having irrigation access regarding land use and water allocation. They are expected to allocate 9 Ha of land for food grains & pulse production, in other words they diversify the farming system by shifting from a part of the area presently used for growing cash crops. As an incentive to these farmers in the procurement for PDS (Public Distribution System) there would be a premium of Rs.4 /Kg for local water efficient cereals. This is subject to the farmers adopting sustainable practices with low external inputs and limited irrigation (LEISA). The land owning farmers would not be in the PDS coverage for food grains and they may procure the food grain of their choice or produce it themselves.

In order to achieve viability, the sustainable farming system should have the following features:
· The market prices for pulses are generally quite attractive for the farmers and therefore price support is not needed.
· The motivation would come from availability of irrigation on demand and a reliable energy service at affordable tariff.
· Priority allocation of water and entitlements for concessional credit and assistance for an area of 2.5 acre for fully organic vegetable production. The break-up of this area would be:
· 0.5-acre land to grow organic vegetables obtained on long-term lease (from common property or a leasing institution set up by govt. or land provided by sympathisers). This land will be managed by the Shrama Seva Kendra ( 5 women group) and made available with rights to the produce for a 5 women spearheading group. The lease rent and the rate of irrigation cost recovery should be reasonable and affordable to the women.
· 2-acre land managed through service agreement with the women's group by the landowners willing to switch over to fully growing organic vegetables.

There would be some flexibility in the above break up of 2.5 acres. The area with the Shrama Seva Kendra can be larger and farmers already fully organic vegetables may come to service agreement with the women's group.

2. The next benefits to land owning farmers from above arrangements would be increased productivity with reduced chemical input cost.

3. They would also avail of the benefit of employment assistance (EGA) for some of the on farm activities necessary for land development, provision of organic inputs. This category of assistance is essential to overcome the losses during the shift to sustainable and diversified farming system from prevailing input and water intensive practices.

4. Since the farmers are not credit-worthy but SHG's are the most credit worthy institute, the 20 women group which are part of the SHG's will bring in the credit for the Protective Irrigation to the farmer and their cost recovery is already explained in the earlier sections

5. They would also get the advantage of the Renewable energy produced as part of the collective to reduce their dependence on the irregular grid power supply


The Stick would be that if the Farmers resort back to their exploitative ways by denying the entitlements of the produce ( as they might argue that the labour cost has anyways come from EGA which is anyways public money) they would stand to lose heavily from the lack of irrigation, better yields and more than anything the skilled labour that is coming to them at a concessional price for them to convert to organic

A clear indication of a preliminary assessment is that the farmers stand to gain substantially through the shift to diversified cropping and organic vegetable production and LEISA. Monopoly procurement price of cotton, various input related subsidies unmetered heavily subsidized electricity and area based irrigation tariff have failed to alleviate the farmers' distress. In the proposed approach the focus is on cost effective use of employment under NREGA terms along with credit concessions justified on ecological considerations. In the following paragraph details are furnished regarding assistance and credit and their impact on employment and income generation. Enhancement of productivity and water use efficiency concurrently with saving of input cost. It can also be seen that the credit concession and additional employment assistance would very well be balanced by the social acceptance (by the poor as well as land owners) of withdrawal of subsidies for external inputs, irrigation, energy