When
Dharamdas Ahirwar started the ‘blended’ wheat cultivation model, his family and
neighbors branded his innovation as an absurd and harebrained scheme. However, as
soon as the tillers and panicles emerged in his trial plot, the opposition from
his family and ridicule of fellow-farmers evaporated. And by the time the plot
was harvested, the entire village stood in admiration. Dharamdas is now hailed
as an innovator in his village.
Dharamdas
is a smallholder farmer associated with Ambedkar Small Holder Farmers’
Collective (SHFC) of Amarmau village of Sagar district. The SHFC was
constituted by Caritas India under its Strengthening Adaptive Farming in
Bangladesh, India and Nepal (SAFBIN) programme which creates reflection
platforms for smallholder farmers who depend on rain-fed farming for
subsistence. SAFBIN is a European Union (EU) supported agriculture research and
development programme that seeks to develop sustainable agriculture models that
can withstand the perils of climate change.
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| Dharamdas (far right), with a pitcher of Matka Khaad, leading a peer learning session of farmers on his trial plot |
“The
first response that I received from my family members when I shared my plan of
cultivating wheat differently was an emphatic no. I was prepared to face their
opposition because they had never even heard of such cultivation pattern”
Dharamdas said. With much goading, he managed to get a favorable response from
his family to start the trial but with a rider – none of his family members would
assist him and he will have to do everything. The condition was agreeable to
this enterprising 44-year old illiterate farmer because he had all reasons to
believe that his trial would succeed.
While
attributing the credit to SAFBIN, Dharamdas says that the wheat trial plan was discussed
in one of the SHFC meetings. “Wheat cultivation in the region was becoming more
unsustainable due to insufficiency of irrigation facility, erratic monsoon
season and increasing cost of fertilizer and pesticides. For our survival, we have
to identify an alternative farming model which involves lesser inputs and water”,
Dharamdas said. Mr. Rajesh Namdev, SAFBIN’s village research worker in Amarmau
helped the farmers understand the concept of System of Wheat Intensification (SWI).
SAFBIN also helped the small farmers prepare and administer various botanical
solutions as substitutes for chemical inputs.
SAFBIN envisages
developing potential candidate agriculture models of food crops by blending
traditional practices and locally suitable modern agriculture practices with
the objective of securing food and nutrition security of smallholder farmers.
After several
rounds of meetings, Ambedkar SHFC finalised a wheat cultivation system modeled on
SWI and organic farming. “Dharamdas was one of the first farmers of the village
to volunteer to do the trial with no assistance at all”, Mr. Rajesh Namdev said.
While preparing his 1.5-acre land, Dharamdas demarcated the trial plot measuring
10 x 10 meter in one corner of his farm. His family expressed concern when
Dharamdas told them that he would use just 200 gram seed on the trial plot. Farmers
normally use at least 1.2 kg seed on a farm of comparable size. The concern of family
members soon gave way to alarm when Dharamdas, as against the practice of
broadcasting, planted the seeds in lines, with 20 centimeter space between them,
with the help of a dibble.
Some farmers and his own family members frequently
visited Dharamdas' trial for observing the ‘failure’ that they expected to
see on the trial plot. “During the germination stage, the plant population in
the trial plot was far less than that was recorded in other farms where the same seed was broadcasted. Some farmers sneered when they saw the trial plot with scanty plant population and my family members wrote the trial off as my misadventure” Dharamdas
said with a smile. Despite the initial indications of failure, Dharamdas
persisted with other practices which were finalised by the SHFC. He sprung yet another surprise when he broke
the tradition of using chemical inputs. Instead using purchased inputs from market, he prepared fish manure and Matka Khaad - a botanical solution entirely
prepared with local materials. He administered these solutions
as growth promoters. This helped him bring down the input cost significantly to Rs. 100 which is less than 10 per cent of the normal expenditure of a farmer on a plot of
comparable size.
With
robust vegetative growth, which was unseen and unheard of in the entire village,
the trial plot started answering for Dharamdas. Wheat plants had an average
tiller count of 22 whereas the average tiller count of other farms was a meager
4. By the time panicles emerged the skeptics had already fallen silent. The
panicles were nearly 1.5 times longer than the average panicle size of other
farms. Farmers who used to visit Dharamdas’ trial plot for purported purpose of
witnessing the ‘failure’ continued their visits – now for witnessing the
success. Harvest sample taken from two sample sub-plots of trial plot pegged
the yield of Dharmdas’ wheat cultivation model at 14.25 tonnes per hectare
whereas other farmers of Amarmau achieved a maximum yield of 10.25 tonnes per hectare.
Incidentally, Amarmau village with no irrigation connectivity suffers from
severe water stress during winter crop.
Dharamdas
now says that his family and farmer friends, finally, are convinced of the
merits of his wheat cultivation model. More importantly, his family and farmer
friends are planning to adopt the new system of wheat cultivation from the
next crop season. While summing up his pleasant trial experience Dharamdas said,
“Achhi cheez shuru main hamesha thik nahi dikhti.
lekin dhairya rakhne par sab kuchh achha ho jata hai”. (Good things need
not look good at the beginning. We need to be patient to see how it unfolds as
real good).
By
Manish Kumar
District Project Officer, Sagar, India
