Agriculture is a dominant economic activity in India, today India ranks second worldwide in farm activities. Over 58 per cent of the rural households depend on agriculture as their principal means of livelihood. Women account for more than 47% of agriculture labour and dominate the small scale food processing sector. It is assumed that an increased income from agriculture related activities is used to purchase high quality nutritious food that improve nutrition level of rural poor population. Despite major progress, serious concerns remain about the nutrition and health situation throughout the developing world. According to the annual report by the Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations, around 194 million people are undernourished in India, the highest in the world.
Agricultural growth has the potential to greatly reduce poverty and also presents opportunities for improving health and nutrition.
Going forward, in the year 2015, Udyogini initiated agri value chain in Jharkhand with the support of Misereor involving 3,000 women producers who are engaged in the production of cereals, vegetables and pulses in three districts. A team of 40 Vahini’s (BDSP’s) has been trained and deployed to provide agri business services to producers.
In Uttarakhand, Udyogini team is delivering Agri-Business Development services and Agri-inputs for carrying out farm based demonstrations to enhance production and quality of farm producers through producer institutions and community based organizations. This year 27 women producers from Ghat and Dewal block have successfully undertaken the demonstration of aromatic plants- Rosemarry & Lemongrass, and about 73 women produces have undertaken spices demonstrations.
The use of standard package of practices in vegetable cultivation which include introduction of improved farming practices, training and exposure visit, soil and water conservation, support of quality seeds by creating a linkage through women entrepreneurs, value addition and collective marketing, have helped producers to fetch better price for their product.
Progress so for
|Year||State||No. of Producers||Donor/Supporter|
|2010||Madhya Pradesh||817||Geneva Global|
|2014-15||MP and Jharkhand||1436||Misereor|
|2015-16||MP and Jharkhand||2136||Misereor|
Value Chain Strategy
- Sustainable increasing the availability of food by increasing agricultural production and productivity.
- Capacity Building of producers by organising them into groups and providing training on various themes by Udyam Vahini’s.
- Increasing food security by strengthening sustainable management of the crop value chain in order to mitigate the risk.
- Market oriented collective action.
Livestock play an important role in the lives of marginal and small farmers as well as landless agricultural laborers as agriculture provides seasonal employment and rearing of the small ruminants is an important subsidiary occupation to households. Under the basket approach to achieve economy of scope and scale to achieve sustainable livelihood , Udyogini is promoting Poultry and Goat rearing value chains along with agriculture activities to provide year –around income sources to our producers.
In the year 2016, Udyogini conducted a pro poor gender sensitive value chain study for Goatry in the state of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha for the World bank BEES network. After that Udyogini initiated goat rearing value chain in Khunti district with 500 producers. Under this project Udyogini focuses on the induction of new animals, better housing and veterinary care, especially vaccination against certain well known killer diseases like PPR (Peste des petits ruminants) through a cadre of women known as “VAHINI’s”.
In Jharkhand, women entrepreneurs engage in retail businesses have acted as hubs to disseminate best agricultural practices as well as agricultural inputs such as seeds/input linkages. Besides, 250 creches, operational in our project areas have been engaged to dovetail the nutritional security part among the families by training them on the uses and practice of available local resources. The entrepreneurs are also being engaged/prepared to make nutritional food/food supplement available/accessible for people in the villages.
To ensure sustainability and year -around food security, Udyogini is focusing on practicing/growing multi crops along with Lac. To carry out this, a triple Crop Value Chain is being followed in which the focus has been laid down to three categories of agriculture namely cereals, pulses and vegetables which will help is mitigating the risk involved in the cropping season. Farm book suite is being planned to launch which will involve the digitalized training curriculum and booklets on each crop.
Seed bank is also intended to be built, which involves the storage of traditional variety of seeds and ensuring timely availability of seeds to the producers.
Case Study – Agriculture
Varju Bai lives in (Limbavali) Bovas village of Udaipur District. Her family earning came out of food grains and vegetable. However, as cultivation was dependent on monsoon, there was no work for 6 months in a year, and the income was meagre. She had to borrow money on high interest rate for her children’s marriage. She also gave her field on mortgage to farmer. She didn’t have enough money for medical expenses.