Back to the Roots for Andhra Pradesh Farmers

8/6/2019 Back to the Roots for Andhra Pradesh Farmers

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/back-to-the-roots-for-andhra-pradesh-farmers 1/8

Back To The Roots For Andhra Pradesh FarmersTraditional practices can revive tired soil and pull small farmers out of debt.Andhra Pradesh shows the way

N ineteen-year-old Meenakshi was sure about the way forward, but she had to convince her husband. She tore a sheet of paper and asked him to sign it. It was an unusual contract. Theywould split the land they had leased for the season ² about one-fourth of an acre. Theywould farm it in their own ways and see who makes more money at the end of the season. If Meenakshi won, her husband would shift to her way of farming.

It was summer of 2004 and Meenakshi, a landless tribal girl from Koduru village in theSrikakulum district of Andhra Pradesh, was convinced that the only way for her to change her debt-ridden life was by changing the way her family practiced agriculture. She was part of awomen¶s self-help group and had seen positive results of a cheaper, more sustainable way of farming that the group had been promoting.

As was the case with many farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Meenakshi¶s family was always indebt. Farming was no longer remunerative and their meagre earnings were spent paying back the interest on the loans taken to purchase chemical pesticides and fertilizers, whichaccounted for over one-third of the total cost.

That summer, under the guidance of her self-help group, she used locally available resourceslike cow dung and traditional knowledge of controlling pests. She reaped a profit of about Rs.15,000 ² Rs. 5,000 more than her husband.



A Small Revival Meenakshi¶s stunning success was part of early experiments in a revolutionary approach tofarming in Andhra Pradesh, called Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA).

Launched formally in 2005 by the Ministry of Rural Development in Andhra Pradesh, CMSA presents a bold alternative to conventional input-intensive agriculture in a state that has the

highest consumption of pesticides and fertilizers in the country.



For example, Meenakshi uses Ghanajivaamrit, a mixture of cow dung, cow urine, jaggery,gram flour and microbes-rich clay. Over a one-acre farm, such a switch could bring downcosts from Rs. 2,200 to just Rs. 200.

The need for such a programme was clear. Over the years, indiscriminate use of pesticides

and fertilizers had degraded soil health. As a result, yields began to stagnate through the1990s. Coupled with high cost of inputs, that spelt doom for small and marginal farmers in

the state. Such farmers own less than 10 acres of land and account for roughly 85 percent of all land holdings. Incidence of farmer indebtedness continued to rise; agricultural woes have

made Andhra Pradesh one of the hotspots for farmer suicides in the country. An estimated1,688 farmers committed suicides between 1997 and 2004.

So far, CMSA¶s results have been heartening. The cost of cultivation has come down by 30 percent to 40 percent. According to one estimate, net incomes on per hectare (or 2.5 acre) basis ranged from $2,520 to $4,032 per annum ² a remarkable increase given the fact thatearning of the landless poor in India is less than $1 per person per day.

Today, CMSA is being followed by over 3 lakh small farmers spread over 3,000 villages in21 of the 23 districts in Andhra Pradesh. It is no surprise then that it has caught the attentionof agriculturists and politicians alike. M.S. Swaminathan, who led India¶s Green Revolutionin the late Sixties, likens the CMSA initiative to an ³Evergreen Revolution´ since it focuseson sustainability of the soil and profitability to the farmers. Buoyed by the possibility of reducing environmental damage, environment minister Jairam Ramesh suggested theagriculture ministry take a close look at CMSA practices. From the Union AgricultureMinistry to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, many are trying tounderstand how CMSA made it happen.

For example, Meenakshi uses Ghanajivaamrit, a mixture of cow dung, cow urine, jaggery,

gram flour and microbes-rich clay. Over a one-acre farm, such a switch could bring downcosts from Rs. 2,200 to just Rs. 200.

The need for such a programme was clear. Over the years, indiscriminate use of pesticides

and fertilizers had degraded soil health. As a result, yields began to stagnate through the

1990s. Coupled with high cost of inputs, that spelt doom for small and marginal farmers in

the state. Such farmers own less than 10 acres of land and account for roughly 85 percent of

all land holdings. Incidence of farmer indebtedness continued to rise; agricultural woes have

made Andhra Pradesh one of the hotspots for farmer suicides in the country. An estimated

1,688 farmers committed suicides between 1997 and 2004.

So far, CMSA¶s results have been heartening. The cost of cultivation has come down by 30

percent to 40 percent. According to one estimate, net incomes on per hectare (or 2.5 acre)

basis ranged from $2,520 to $4,032 per annum ² a remarkable increase given the fact that

earning of the landless poor in India is less than $1 per person per day.

Today, CMSA is being followed by over 3 lakh small farmers spread over 3,000 villages in

21 of the 23 districts in Andhra Pradesh. It is no surprise then that it has caught the attention



of agriculturists and politicians alike. M.S. Swaminathan, who led India¶s Green Revolution

in the late Sixties, likens the CMSA initiative to an ³Evergreen Revolution´ since it focuses

on sustainability of the soil and profitability to the farmers. Buoyed by the possibility of

reducing environmental damage, environment minister Jairam Ramesh suggested the

agriculture ministry take a close look at CMSA practices. From the Union Agriculture

Ministry to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, many are trying tounderstand how CMSA made it happen.

How the Model Works

The CMSA model has broken the myth that small farms are not remunerative, says T. Vijay Kumar,

an IAS officer who spearheaded the CMSA initiative as the CEO of the Society for Elimination of Rural

Poverty or SERP, a non-profit entity set up by the state government. When we started out, our key

concern was to make farming remunerative by reducing the input costs without compromising on

the yields, he adds. He has recently joined as joint secretary in the Union Ministry of Rural

Development and hopes to assist scaling up CMSA at the national level through the National Rural

Livelihood Mission.

Rural livelihood programmes under SERP, like CMSA, are financed by the World Bank. CMSA is

additionally financed through community savings and other state and central level programmes like

Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana.

The key to CMSAs success is the community participation. The models approach is ground up; in

any village CMSA starts by the formation of a farmer self-help group (SHG). Here, the existing

women SHGs of SERP come in handy. Each SHG typically has 10 to 15 women. Each member pays a

small registration fee which adds to the overall corpus of CMSA for internal credit purposes.

Once part of the system, farmers receive extensive guidance by more experienced farmers like

Meenakshi. SERP too provides them with knowledge and capacity building services.

We subsidise knowledge instead of fertilizers and pesticides. Teaching Meenakshi and letting her

teach others like her is the best extension service model [which helps extend knowledge to more

and more practitioners], says D.V. Raidu, the state project advisor for CMSA.

Today Meenakshi is one of the 63 state-level Community Resource Persons (CRPs), the highest rung

of extension workers. I teach from my own experience and that is why I can address the doubts and

problems of the farmers, she says in Telugu.

Meenakshis success story best captures the change being brought about by the CMSA initiative. Sixyears on, her husband has stayed true to the contract and together they now lease and farm 2 acres.

The next step is to own a piece of land for which she is saving.

Like Meenakshi, many farmer households have been able to come out of their chronic indebtedness

thanks to CMSA.

According to one survey of five districts, quoted by Om Rupela, a former principal scientist with



Indian Crop Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics, 386 out of 467 (83 percent) farmers have

reacquired their mortgaged lands by using the savings after two years of practicing CMSA.

CMSA is not only helping subsistence farmers come out of their debt trap, but is also showing them

the benefits of a market which pays a premium for better quality.

Rajshekar Reddy Seelam, managing director of Sresta, a Hyderabad-based company that sells

organic food products both in India and abroad, is another such believer. By the year-end he is set to

roll out a new brand selling products out of CMSA farms, conforming to international standards.

We believe that in 10-15 years, the market for such products would be around $5 billion just within

the country, he says.

The Bigger Picture

The story in Andhra Pradesh is not too different from what happened to agriculture in the rest of

India, especially areas like Punjab, where Green Revolution was implemented in the largest measure.

By the start of the 1990s, agriculture in the country had started choking on its initial success, giving

rise to two broad sets of problems: Stagnant agricultural yields and increasingly un-remunerative

farming.

Over the 1990s, almost imperceptibly, the whole system became lethargic. The extension services of

the government started to fall apart. The key function of such services is to bring the farmers up to

speed with the new technologies being perfected in the labs and guide them in adopting these.

Meanwhile, farmers, influenced by local moneylenders and pesticide sellers, resorted to

indiscriminate use of chemical inputs. Every passing year, the soil became progressively less

responsive, all the while raising the stakes to a point where even a single crop failure tipped the

farming household into chronic indebtedness.

Today, rural indebtedness in Punjab, one of the best agricultural performers of India, is three times

the national average.

The importance of this issue can be gauged from the fact that the National Policy for Farmers (2007),

the main agricultural policy document in the country, states, There is a need to focus more on the

economic well-being of the farmers, rather than just on production. Socio-economic well-being must

be a prime consideration of agricultural policy, besides production and growth.

On the other hand, the decadal growth rates of yields for the two most widely produced crops havecontinued to fall since 1980s. For example, Wheat yields grew at 3.10 percent during the 1980s, 1.83

percent during the 1990s, and just 0.58 percent during the 2000s. The story is largely the same for

most of the other crops.

Official data shows how these stagnant yields affected Indias increasing population over time. The

net availability of rice has fallen from 81 kg per capita per year in 1991 to 53 kg in 2008 while that of

wheat has fallen from 60 kg to 53 kg per capita per year over the same period.



The distinction between the two broad problems is important since the very policies and tools that

were supposed to increase yields were also responsible over time for aggravating farmer

indebtedness. But there is no doubt about which is the bigger problem for those promoting CMSA.

We believe that until agriculture becomes remunerative, even the food security concerns cannot bemet, says Kumar.

Necessary, but not Sufficient

So can the CMSA model ease the agricultural distress in a country where 60 percent of the

population, roughly 700 million, is still involved in largely un-remunerative agriculture?

The short answer is yes.

But there are still some doubts whether CMSA can solve the other riddle of raising yields.

Not even the chemicals company representatives deny the inherent wisdom of the CMSA approach.

However, there are a few qualifications.

S.K. Khosla, advisor, CropLife India and Rajen Sunderesan of the Agrochemicals Policy Group agree

that there has been excessive use of chemical inputs by farmers. However, they blame it on the

failure of the extension services which has allowed a gap of 20 years between the technological

frontiers and the farm. With Indias extension system in tatters, farmers continue to implement

obsolete technology and methods.

Matching yields in the short term is one thing but Will this system allow for higher yields in the

years to come? asks Sunderesan. If it can, only then should it be promoted, he says.

What he means is that more output cannot be achieved without more inputs. At present, there is an

imbalance in the soil that needs to be restored and CMSA is doing just that. However, once this is

done, newer varieties of seeds would need more nutrients to give better yields. The way seeds

technology functions is that every new variety is capable of taking up more nutrients from the soil

and converting it into food. Without any assistance in the form of chemical fertilizers, newer seed

varieties will not be able to produce more from the same piece of land.

Agrees Suresh Babu, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute,

Without increasing inputs, it is not clear whether yields will continue to increase in the longer

term. Swaminathan too feels that once the imbalance in the soil is addressed, it would be best to

make use of chemical inputs.

Babu believes that while CMSA resolves the indebtedness problem, there is no guarantee that the

farmers will not rush back to using pesticides in case of a major pest attack.

Organising people is the key to CMSAs success but that is also the main hurdle in replicating this

initiative in other states, says T. Nand Kumar, a former Indian agriculture secretary and currently

the chairman, Commission on the Optimum Use of Fertilizers.



In his budget speech this year, the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, announced the extension of

green revolution to the eastern region of the country with the active involvement of Gram

Sabhas and the farming families. Irrespective of whether CMSA can be replicated elsewhere in the

country or not, one thing is certain: It will provide some key markers to ensure that the second green

revolution in India is more sustainable than the first.

A Bugs Life

How an understanding of the life cycle of pests helps protect crops

Its easy enough to spot a CMSA field. As you approach the small handkerchief plot nestled among

swathes of lush fields, you first notice the buzz. As you get closer, you see the source of the buzz:

Dragonflies and birds the little plot is teeming with them.

You also notice that unlike the other farms, the crop lengths here are varied. It almost looks like an

oasis surrounded by regular fields. For instance, in Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh, a typicalCMSA farm has every two or three rows of red gram (tur) interspersed with one row of castor, unlike

a non-CMSA farm which has a mono-crop of red gram. The whole plot has a hedge of corn plants,

and if you look closer, it is only on a CMSA farm that you will find ladybird beetles, cosily ensconced

in the leaves of the corn plants.

The reason for these varied crops is simple: The ladybird beetle feeds on the pests that attack red

gram and castor. Besides, the corn plants provide protection from pesticides used on adjoining



farms. Castor attracts the pests that would have otherwise attacked red gram, explains

Meenakshi. So instead of spending a lot of money on repeated sprays of pesticides, farmers just

spend some time every week plucking castor leaves where the pest has laid eggs.

So for crop protection, CMSA relies more on understanding the behaviour and life cycle of the pests

attacking a particular crop.

No mechanisation, no health hazards due to pesticides, no side effects for the soil and the

environment, zero costs for the farmer and a more nutritious yield of red gram. For the same

volume of rice the CMSA produce weighs more. So if a jar full of conventional rice weighs 1 kg, a jar

full of CMSA rice weighs about 50 grams more.

The second important aspect of CMSA consists of a comprehensive strategy to improve soil health.

Plants dont eat chemical fertilizers by spoons. It is an organic process which must be respected

otherwise the soil will stop responding, as indeed it has, says D.V. Raidu, the state project advisor

for CMSA.

But CMSA is not merely the replacement of a few chemical pesticides and fertilizers by cheaper

options. CMSA isnt organic farming either. Essentially, its appeal lies in its practicality in a country

where landholdings get smaller with each passing generation.

Frankly, we do not teach anything that is not already a part of the Integrated Pest Management and

Integrated Nutrient Management techniques accepted by the government. The trouble is, nobody

cares to follow it, adds Raidu.

Back to the Roots for Andhra Pradesh Farmers

Documents

Transcript of Back to the Roots for Andhra Pradesh Farmers