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Greening the barren land in Jharkhand and West Bengal -Aakriti Shrivastava
-ANI

Greening the barren land in Jharkhand and West Bengal

Deoghar: Standing amid the road in Kasuadi village in Jharkhand, Deevani Mahato looks intently towards the contrasting landscape stretching across on both sides of the road. Wet green fields of wheat, mustard and grams, separated by the bunds of mud, cover the land on one side. Barren tracts of red soil full of dry bushes and stones stretch on the other.

"By next year we'll make this entire Taand (upland) green just like the other side," he says, pointing towards the barren land. Mahato's confidence stems from the extraordinary fiat that the residents of his village had performed in the past two years.

Till 2013, about 80 families of Kasuadi village were facing constant problem of malnutrition and migration due to poor agriculture produce. With most of the land in the village being upland which could hardly retain any rainwater it severely affects the farms and the farmers. While the average landholding in the village is about four acres per family, each family would cultivate only five to eight per cent of it due to unavailability of irrigation facilities. "The rain water, instead of increasing the moisture in the soil, would wash away the top soil as water flew down very quickly," says Mahato.

But then Kasuadi residents decided to change their fate. They prepared and implemented a village micro-plan to level the upland and create bunds under MGNREGS. Abhivakti Foundation, a local non-profit organisation, with the financial support from German development agency WeltHungerHilfe, helped farmers build a pond in the low-lying fields near the village to store rainwater and installed a lift irrigation project to irrigate the upland. However, just bringing water to the fields was not enough to make productive the land which had lost its fertility long ago.

A systematic crop selection was thus followed to revive the soil productivity. "Soil in uplands lacks nitrogen and water retaining capacity. We first introduced the cover crops such as Kulthi (horse gram) which protect the soil from getting washed in the rains and also provide fodder to the farmers. This fixes the top soil. Then we introduced legume crops like pulses and maize which fixed nitrogen in the soil and could survive in tough conditions as well. This experimental cultivation helps the soil to hold cereals such as wheat and paddy and green vegetables," says Krishna Kant of Abhivyakti Foundation. Through this process, at least 24 families in the village have brought about 35 acre additional land under cultivation. Most of them are now cultivating two crops (both Rabi and Kharif) in these lands. The village now plans to bring the remaining 80 acres upland under cultivation this year.

In the Santhal Pargana region of Jharkhand where Kasuadi lies, there is huge uncultivated fallow land that has been losing its soil health due to scanty vegetative cover. Runoff and soil erosion has also been very high. The Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act of the state prohibits transfer of land through sale to protect indigenous communities from land alienation. So while the predominantly tribal population of the region has good average landholding, the agriculture production from these lands is insignificant. Open grazing has also been a major constraint to take up crop husbandry in such areas. This coupled with the increasing capital investment in the modern methods of agriculture has forced the tribal farmers of the region to migrate as daily wage labourers. Poor income and food production has also led to malnourishment of the tribal children. Similar situations have prevailed in the plateau regions of the neighbouring West Bengal.

It is in this context WeltHungerHilfe initiated a campaign to bring fallow land under cultivation under its Sustainable Integrated Farming Systems (SIFS) program in Jharkhand and West Bengal. Under SIFS, the non-profit organisation has been promoting maximum use of the local resources available with the smallholder farmers to increase the agriculture output with minimum input cost. Anshuman Das of WeltHungerHilfe claims that in past two years over 900 ha of barren fallow land has been converted into cultivable land and about 872 ha land has graduated from supporting single crop to double crop in a year in the two states. While in many villages the organisations provided partial help to the farmers, many surrounding villages got inspired by these results and have taken up the task on their own.

The results are showing up. Fallow land cultivation has helped to bring migration rate down in terms of household numbers as well as migration days as it provides extra income to the farmers, says Sujit Mitra of Development Research Communication and Services Centre, a Kolkata-based non profit organisation which has been instrumental in supporting farmers in cultivating fallow lands. He explains the income calculation from the fallow land: "The cost for working a 0.33 acre barren land roughly comes to Rs 1500 (including labour cost) while this can generate crops (pigeon peas) of about Rs 8000 for the next two to three years."

In the Deoghar district of Jharkhand, farmers have used the fallow land to revive their traditional millet crops. This has significantly helped them in fighting malnutrition. "About 87 ha barren land has been brought under cultivation in this block in past two years. The interesting thing is that in most of the newly cultivated land, farmers have grown Madua (millet) which was a household name in Deoghar till two decades ago but disappeared in the aftermath of green revolution," says Babita Sinha of Deoghar-based non-profit Pravah. Madua requires little rainfall to grow and flourishes even in wastelands, so the drought-stricken area needs no external irrigation. In addition to that, it also has high nutritional value and is healthier, she adds.

The Charkha Development Communication Network feels the farmers of Jharkhand and West Bengal have challenged the migration and malnutrition by developing farming. Without using any chemicals, they have managed to transform barren land into lush green fields. Hope they will be able to inspire their peers who have given up on farming!