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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Innovate to revamp rural agriculture -Aakriti Shrivastava
-The Pioneer

Earlier, due to poor electricity supply in Jharkhand, farmers were unable to store vegetables, thereby incurring losses. Now, with the introduction of ‘desi fridges' that do not require external energy, they can get themselves a better deal, writes Aakriti Shrivastava

Sanjay Singh, a smallholder farmer is market savvy. He claims to produce the best quality vegetables in his village, Madanpur, in Jharkhand. He sells his vegetables in a nearby weekly market and does not allow any bargaining. "I grow vegetables without using any chemical fertiliser or pesticide. Many people do not know the benefits of organic farming but they buy my vegetables at a higher price because they say, it tastes better and looks fresher," he says with pride.

Singh has been growing organic vegetables for more than a year now. However, for six months, he was unable to cash-in on the quality of his produce. Vegetables are perishable agriculture produce and with poor electricity in his village, he could not store his vegetables for a long period of time. "They (vegetables) lost almost half of their weight in a day. I had no other option but to sell everything at the end of the day inhatiya (local market) for whatever price I got," says Singh.

What changed the way to deal with the market is a rural innovation in Deoghar district of Jharkhand which now allows farmers to store vegetables. This, not only increases their overall profit but also encourages new farmers to take up vegetable farming.

A zero energy cool chamber, or ‘desi-fridge' as the locals call it, is a brick-walled structure that keeps temperature down by nine to 10 degrees as compared to the surroundings. "It is a simple design, that consists of two brick walls with a gap of three inches. Sand is filled in this gap and a water drip is added to keep the sand cool. A thatched roof is created above the chamber to avoid direct sunlight. This chamber does not require any external energy source to function and can store about 60 to 80kg of vegetables or fruits easily for five to six days without any loss in their weight," says Singh, proudly showing his stock of vegetables in the chamber.

"I can now wait till the next hatiya (local market), which is four to five days away," he adds. The use of this innovation has helped him earn a profit of Rs700 to Rs800 a month during harvest season, he claims.

The idea for this appliance, was developed by Jharkhand-based non-profit organisations, Abhivyakti Foundation and Centre for World Solidarity, and executed with aid from a German development agency, Welthungerhilfe, as part of its Sustainable Integrated Farming System programme.

Under SIFS, the non-profits have been supporting smallholder farmers in the drought-prone areas of Jharkhand and West Bengal to take up innovative ways to increase agricultural output while decreasing input costs.

"We realised that many farmers were not opting for vegetable cultivation because they faced storage issues. Vegetables don't last for a couple of days after being harvested. This is when they introduced the zero chambers. It has a lot of utility in India, where electricity is still a luxury for many," says Krishna Kant of Abhivyakti Foundation.

Farmers in Deoghar have been struggling to get good agricultural output due to poor rainfall (1,200-1,300mm annually) and upland terrain which hardly retains any rainwater. A baseline survey done by Abhivyakti Foundation for implementation of SIFS in 2012, revealed that in 12 villages of Devipur, Deoghar, all families were engaged in agriculture.

Inspite of agriculture as their occupation, they were able to produce less than 50 per cent of their food requirement, while the other half was purchased from the market. Agriculture contributed 14.02 per cent of the income source. The survey also highlighted that 53 per cent of their children were stunted while 74 per cent of the mothers are anaemic.

It was in this context that Welthungerhilfe decided to promote rural innovation under SIFS in Deoghar. While zero chamber caters to farmers with enough surplus to store, many other such innovations in agriculture have reached farmers across demographics, which have transformed the landscape of districts like Deoghar.

Rajesh Jha of CWS talks about the lack of assorted nutrition intake. "We surveyed 466 households across 12 to 13 villages and found that most of the families consumed carbohydrates from rice and potato. Key-hole farming and other innovations focussed on diversifying the food they consume, to include green vegetables in diets."

Key-hole kitchen gardens have been successful in supplying many with vegetables for household consumption, improving their nutrition intake. Gyani Devi of Baarwan village, one of the many to have developed a kitchen garden, counts the benefits of the innovations. "My kids eat much healthier now, I give them vegetables everyday. Earlier, we could only give them vegetables twice a week." Like Gyani, many others in Deoghar have taken to the benefit from key-hole farming, as the number of these gardens has increased to 100 or 125 in the block.

The Pioneer, 12 January, 2015, http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/innovate-to-re
vamp-rural-agriculture.html