adminDr Gift Mugano
India’s Gumla is located 600 to 700 metres above the sea level in Chota Nagpur plateau region with moderate climatic conditions and healthy rainfall of 1 200-1 500 mm annually.The district of India is classified as Schedule Area because it has a dominant population of Munda and Oraon tribes. The average landholding is 2,5 acre to 5 acre. Agriculture is the main occupation with more than 70 percent of the people participating in the activity as main workers (employment for more than 183 days).
1.1 Project
Gumla intervention was jointly financed by Swarnajayanti Gram SwarozgarYojna (SGSY), Special Central Assistance(SCA) and Integrated Action Plan (IAP) funds. Rs 12 Crore SGSY funds were channelled through Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society (JSLPS) between 2009 and 2013 towards the rural infrastructure development with the objective of impacting 1000 SHGs.
The SCA and IAP funds were administered by the Tribal Welfare Commission Office (TWCO).The objective of the technical assistance was to develop Gumla into an agriculture production cluster for addressing abject poverty in the district. This was planned to be done by taking advantage of the suitable agro-climatic conditions, plentiful labour, natural resource endowment, access to available credit and relevant government schemes. The intervention was started as a pilot in 2007 /08 and was successfully replicated in the district in view of the positive results observed on the field.
1.2 Beneficiary
The main beneficiaries of the project are 20 000 women, majority of which belong to the marginalised tribal communities of Oraon and Munda. These 20 000 women have been organised into 3 000 Self Help Groups (SHGs) which serve as unit of intervention for the project. It is important to note that the project used the medium of these women to strengthen the household economy by following the strategy of intensification and diversification of crop production.
2. The Model
2.1 Information about value chain before the intervention
Before the intervention, the Gumla farmers were following subsistence agriculture for most part of the year and very little produce (5 percent) was being sold in local haats in rainy season only.
Production Systems: The landscape in Gumla can be classified into lowlands, medium lowlands, medium uplands and uplands. The lowlands and medium lowlands comprised 70 percent total land, while medium upland and upland comprised 30 percent of total land. Prior to the intervention, subsistence agriculture was predominantly being practiced in Gumla. The different landscape had different rain-fed cropping system as described below:
1) Lowlands: The lowlands are considered the best agricultural land in Gumla. Ten percent of these lands are valley lands which have high nutrient and moisture retention. Wealthiest farmers owned lands here and successfully followed paddy mono-cropping system even with a fickle monsoon.
2) Medium lowlands: The medium lowlands are characterised by good soil with medium water and nutrition retention. Relatively better off farmers owned land here and had a stable paddy mono-cropping system depending on a more than average performance of monsoon.
3) Medium uplands: The medium uplands were degraded lands, but better than the uplands in terms of nutrient and moisture retention. The poor and marginalised farmers owned land here and practiced paddy mono-cropping system which was highly vulnerable to water stress. Medium uplands were also the region where most of the households had their dwellings.
In the backyards of these dwelling, every household was practicing vegetable production which was being predominantly self-consumed. Once in a while, whatever little excess was being produced was sold in the local haats. It is important to note that this production was taking place in the rainy season between the months of August and October.
4) Uplands: The uplands were depleted and poorly husbanded lands where the moisture holding capacity of the soil was very low. The most vulnerable, marginalised and poor farmers owned land here and produced millet and pulses which gave a very poor yield.
This predominantly subsistence paddy mono-cropping system had compelled people to take up small ruminant rearing and backyard poultry as a means for livelihood.
These livestock assets were being used by the households as emergency cash reserves as well as to pay for their annual expenses such as education of children.
Marketing systems: Prior to the intervention, markets in Gumla and its proximity were grossly deficit as the local farmers were not able to sufficiently supply agricultural produce to them.
This was mainly because they were following subsistence paddy mono-cropping system which left little for the market. As a consequence, most of the products used to come to these markets from either Bengal, Bihar or Pithoria agriculture cluster in Ranchi.
2.2 Transformed Model and details about the intervention
Keeping these inefficiencies in mind, agriculture production cluster was planned in Gumla to address the food insecurity and abject poverty persisting in the region. The following interventions were undertaken to realise this:
1) First intervention was to organise the women into SHGs and federate them under Village Organisations (VOs). There was on average one VO for every 700 to 800 families residing in six to seven villages. These VOs became a platform for channelling grants and entitlements as well as delivering support to the SHGs.
The livelihood subcommittee of the VO was responsible and accountable for providing livelihood related services. A Community Service Provider(CSP) was appointed by the subcommittee for actively engaging with SHGs in a VO to access working capital credit from the banks and facilitating preparation of SHG livelihood and micro-credit plans.
2) The SGSY, SCA and IAP financing was used to construct robust irrigation infrastructure such as lift irrigation schemes, seepage tanks, lowland wells, water harvest tanks etc. with the technical assistance of Pradan. This resulted in significant irrigation access to 9000 families. This has overtime led to farmers not only becoming self-sufficient, but also producing market surplus by having a double or even a third crop.
3) After the irrigation access had been achieved, crop diversification and intensification strategies were pursued in order to maximise the benefits to farmers. Therefore, the following two strategies were followed:
i. The food security of the households was prioritised and hence advanced practices such as Systematic Rice Intensification (SRI) and modern inputs such as improved paddy seed varieties were introduced for increasing paddy productivity of the farmers so that they can become self sufficient
ii. After achieving paddy self-sufficiency, the following two different crop systems were encouraged for adoption for uplands and lowlands with technical assistance of Pradan:
For the uplands, fruit orchards were planted with vegetables grown between the fruit trees to provide regular and consistent income stream
For the lowlands, alternate cropping of vegetable and pulses or oilseeds and pulses were followed.
In addition to these, modern farm implements such as power tillers and wheel hoe were acquired at 40 to 50 percent subsidy from Agricultural Technological Management Agency (ATMA) for intensifying the agriculture production.
4) The Water Users Associations (WUAs) were organised to coordinate the irrigation operations and resolve any disputes arising from the sharing of water.
This includes, but not limited to, planning of the type of crop to be grown and in what area depending on the availability of irrigated water, coordinating turns among the beneficiaries for equitable access to irrigation, resolving issues pertaining to acquisition of land for irrigation infrastructure development etc.
5) The structure of SHGs was effectively leveraged to deliver trainings to the women beneficiaries on planning their crop calendar and improving their agronomic practices for diversification and intensification of agriculture.
Pradan delivered the initial set of agronomic trainings to the SHG members which was followed by refresher trainings and handholding support provided by the CSPs. The adoption of improved agronomic practices has led to substantial yield gains.
These diverse horticulture crops and extended production cycle (8-9 months) has been successful in attracting market actors even from the distant markets.
This is because Gumla gives these distant buyers an opportunity to buy assortment of vegetables in bulk from the same area, thus significantly reducing their transaction and logistics costs.
6) In order to do aggregation operations, Aggregation Centres were established for every 800 to 900 families serving one to two agriculture clusters. These agriculture clusters were equipped with
crates and weighing machines to improve transparency and decrease post-harvest losses, respectively.
These Centres were piloted with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funding and consequently replicated with IAP funds.
The crates were bought at ATMA at a subsidy. In these centres, the CSPs were actively involved in aggregation, transportation and price negotiation on behalf of the farmers on a commission basis. These CSPs have been exposed to various markets and trained on accessing relevant market information for making selling decisions which allowed them to perform these selling tasks quite professionally.
7) Good service delivery mechanism was organised with CSPs serving as the main service delivery channels for the farmers. CSPs were coached to prepare livelihood plans, help SHGs access credit, procure inputs in bulk, build capacities of farmers through agronomic trainings, aggregate the produce, market the produce, provide market information to the farmers and facilitate the purchase of produce in the aggregation centres.
They provided refresher trainings and on-field technical assistance to the farmers. On farm technical assistance included, but not limited to, diagnosis of plant diseases, timing of sowing, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), staggering the production of the farmers to access premium market prices, etc.
2.3 Impact on the beneficiary
1) Income increase: The crop diversification and intensification strategy has substantially increased the income levels of the farmers by 150 percent.
2) Investment in assets: After becoming aware of the importance of technologies in crop intensification, the farmers are increasing their investment in technologies such as irrigation pump sets, farm implements etc.
In particular, the farmers, especially in lowland areas, have already started investing in lowland wells by dividing the investment of one well among five to six households who would be the potential beneficiaries of the water access gained through the well. This has led to further expansion of irrigation command areas benefiting additional farmers.
3) Improved nutrition status: The self-sufficiency gained in paddy and diverse production of vegetables all-round the year has considerably improved the nutritious status in Gumla with people introducing more vegetables in their daily diet.
4) Women empowerment: One of the most important benefits of the Gumla SHG model has been that the women have assumed the decision making role in the household, which has considerably improved their status. Consequently, this has increased their mobility in the district and they have been found to pursue both economic activities relating to farming operations and governance activities relating to panchayats more actively. As a consequence of this empowerment, the enrolment of children, especially of girls, in schools has increased and women have started taking up important roles of CSPs that has further brought about a transformation in the society.
5)Innovation: The farmers are increasingly taking up high value horticultural crops such as broccoli and adopting new technologies.
3. Critical Factors of Success
1) Agriculture Cluster Production concept: Crop intensification and diversification strategy was followed to realise agriculture cluster in Gumla which has significantly increased its scale of operation. This increased scale has not only attracted the distant buyers to the market, but also made it viable for service providers and banks to deliver their services. CSPs are at the centre of the service delivery model and have been a critical factor of success for the agriculture production cluster to come up in Gumla.
2) Women Self Help Groups: The SHG platform has served as an ideal medium to develop the model. Services ranging from livelihood plan development to collective marketing of agriculture produce are provided to SHGs making it viable for the service providers to engage with them. In particular, the success of high repayment of the micro-credit loans to the bank can be attributed to the SHGs style of working where the loan is accessed collectively.
3) Access to working capital: The access to working capital by taking micro-credit loans from the bank has been important to finance the initial investment required to transition from paddy mono-cropping system to high value horticulture crop production system. The loan application is made collectively by the members of the SHG based on their livelihood plans, which allows them to have a strong business rationale when asking for a credit, thus increasing the probability of loan being accepted.
4) Irrigation: Initial irrigation investment has been critical for farmers to access water which has enabled them to take up high value horticulture production. The organisation of WUAs around these irrigation schemes for coordination and maintenance has further increased the sustainability of these schemes.
5) Techno – managerial assistance from Pradan: The techno- managerial assistance provided by Pradan has been of prime importance in not only developing agriculture production cluster in Gumla, but also in developing strong service delivery services to sustain cluster’s operation. This case study provide lessons to Zimbabwe which can be adopted in the command agriculture programme.
This information was extracted from World Bank Report titled Case Studies of Successful Pro-poor models in India.
Dr Mugano is an Economic Advisor, Trade and Competitiveness Expert, Research Associate at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (SA). Feedback: Email: [email protected], cell: +263 772 541 209.
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