CHHATTISGARH is a relatively new state in the Indian subcontinent, having been carved out from the state of Madhya Pradesh in November 2000 – it is now the tenth largest state with an area of 135,190 km2. Located in the heart of India and sharing its border with six states of the country, its creation gave rise to great expectations of rapid development.

Chhattisgarh has one of the highest share of tribal population within a state, accounting for nearly 10% of the Scheduled Tribes in India. Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) together constitute more than 50 per cent of the state’s population.

To accelerate rapid development, various programmes to achieve optimum socio-economic and health indicators have been initiated. When viewing health through a parochial lens, despite different policy interventions to impact ‘health’ positively, the gauging indicators such as percentage of women with BMI<18.5, U5MR, and underweight children are still poor. The prevalence of female malnutrition in Chhattisgarh is higher than the national average – half of the ST females are malnourished. The U5MR among STs is significantly higher than the national average. The percentage of underweight children in Chhattisgarh is also higher than the national average, further underlining the appalling health condition of the state’s population.

India’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2008 score is 23.7, ranking it 66th out of 88 countries; Chhattisgarh ranks 14th out of the 17 states in the India State Hunger Index (ISHI). Child underweight contributes more than either of the other two underlying variables to the GHI score for India and to the ISHI scores for almost all states of the country. Tackling child undernutrition, therefore, remains crucially important for all states in India.

The infant mortality rate in Chhattisgarh is currently estimated at 54 deaths per 1,000 live births (SRS 2009). Infant mortality is higher in rural areas (55 per 1000 births) than in urban areas (47 per 1000 births). The demographic profile shows that about 80% of the total population lives in rural areas, thus making the forests and agrarian economy a key pivot in the development process, and the small landholding farmer, a vital cog. The principal crop in Chhattisgarh is rice; 62% of the gross agricultural area is under rice cultivation. Undoubtedly, improved methods of cultivation leading to higher yields can go a long way in ensuring food security for families.

It is noteworthy that food insecurity in the area forces farmers to grow rice on all kinds of lands, including the upper reaches in spite of the limited water holding capacity of the land. Evidently, the challenge is producing more rice from low and mid-low lands while ensuring year round food security and enabling farmers to diversify into horticultural crops in the upper reaches.

 

To ensure food security with paddy cultivation and helping small land-holding farmers to diversify into other horticulture crops as an alternate solution to cultivating paddy on lands where water holding capacities are low, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has emerged as a potential tool to address the challenge. Small landholding rice farmers who apply SRI can benefit from a more stable rice produce. By reducing inputs and getting higher incomes from improved market opportunities, the risk of households falling back into poverty reduces. This increases food security and resilience to the variability and impacts of climate change.

With SRI methodology, targeting an average of 6,000 kg of rice production from a hectare of land seems very realistic where the national average paddy yield is less than 2,500 kg/ha. Thus a family with four months food security sustaining on its own farm can reach year round food security. Families with better levels of food security can comfortably shift to high value crops to earn more. In this context, SDTT supported PRADAN to introduce SRI method of paddy cultivation in twelve districts of Chhattisgarh¹ in collaboration with other NGO partners. The thrust area of the project is an extension of SRI to small and marginal farmers through partnerships with NGOs and to ensure year-round food sustainability for the participant families. In addition, it also aims to enhance soil health and fertility to sustain agriculture based livelihoods and create a knowledge platform to raise awareness and widely share lessons learnt among stakeholders. Agronomic practices proposed in SRI technology requires the farmer to shift from traditional/ indigenous practices.

All steps of SRI are easily manageable within family labour. From the labour person-days calculation, it is evident that SRI is easily manageable by 2-3 effective family labourers on an average on one acre of land. The production enhancement would directly address the foodgrain deficit of small and marginal farmers, who face a shortfall of about one ton of grain per year for a family.

The low cost inputs and the flexibility of SRI packages are attractive to marginal farmers. Several steps like time of transplantation and water management can be somewhat flexible, and this makes the production enhancement technique suitable to small farmers.

This SRI method also gives greater discipline and productivity to agriculture which remains the major livelihood option for rural households. A dropout study revealed that only 2.74% of families opted out from SRI interventions.

 

Under the leadership of PRADAN and partnering NGOs, engaging and mobilizing women² and strengthening the village organizations has been an integrated strategy to achieve the desired results. Developing women’s self-help groups and strongly involving them in building knowledge and skills around agriculture productivity ensures both enhancement of the main food crop and diversification into cash crops. The idea is to develop a unique convergence of strengthening farming system based livelihoods around crops dovetailing financial services, access to markets and government entitlements (MGNREGA, PDS, ICDS, MDM, among others).

Since improved agriculture productivity by itself may not necessarily translate to better nutritional status or a significant reduction of malnourished children in the village, an effort has been initiated to develop intervention models integrating nutrition with agriculture development. These have been conceptualized and led by women’s grassroots level groups and their associative tiers.

 

Capacity building of NGOs and farmers to introduce SRI in different crops has been initiated. A group of Community Resource Persons (one for each 50 families), identified by the community, was trained and engaged to provide handholding support, followed by refresher training to the families to ensure proper practices in every farmer’s field. Learning visits had also been conducted at community level on SRI and resource management. During the pilot period, the focus was to strengthen the package of practices not only for SRI paddy, but also to introduce improved practices for vegetables, millets, oil seeds, etc. engaging 25% of the families in the selected area.

Organic practices in farming is one of the key factors of success in the SRI technique, which directs humus content in the soil, allowing for beneficial microbial action in the root zone. During the project period, 53% families adopted organic practices. Green manure crop, Sesbania aculiata (dhain-cha) or similar leguminous crops that are locally available were used in the areas to reduce the cost of cultivation and also to improve land husbandry including nitrogen, which has moisture-holding capacities. Vermi-composting, liquid fertilizer (Jibamrit), leaf composting, organic repellent application was also practiced to revive soil health and increase organic carbon content across the project area.

There was a convergence with existing government schemes for year round agricultural farm based development. Irrigation during the critical phase of crop development was ensured during the project. In Sarguja, Surajpur, Dhamtrai, Knaker, Bilaspur, Gariyabandh and Kanker districts, land and water interventions in convergence with the MGNREGS were initiated. Ten partner NGOs were involved in the process of comprehensive planning and facilitating the gram panchayat’s to implement land and water based interventions. Government officials were also involved in field visits of SRI interventions, yield certifications and in the technical workshops that were organized.

 

During the period 2014-15, the project involved 34281 families spread over 568 villages in 12 districts, with expected coverage of 6500 ha. The main crops were rice, mustard, millets and vegetables. The average yield of SRI paddy was 6.37 mt/ha (yield analysis of 13% of total outreach) which is nearly three times the average yield of paddy in the state. Similarly, in case of SRI millets the average yield was 3.06 mt/ha (yield analysis of 10% of total number of families) in the year 2013-14.

The food sufficiency impact was analyzed based on a sample of 2571 families, i.e. 13% of the total participating families. The average family landholding under SRI was 0.26 ha, with an average of five members in a family. Families were found to consume three kg of rice per day (random survey). It was assumed that one kg of paddy would give 0.66 kg of polished rice after threshing and drying. The result showed that the average production (mt/ha) was approximately 2.1 in traditional practices which was drastically increased to 6.37 with SRI practices. This would ensure food grain security for ten months compared to three months through traditional practices.³

A similar trend was observed in the production data of SRI millets of kharif 13-14 where 90% families adopted SRI principles in their fields, achieving yields greater than 4 mt/ha, almost double the traditional yield. In SRI millets, 79% families of sample study (33% of total participating families) achieved yields more than 2 mt/ha, whereas the state’s average yield of millets in traditional practice is 1 mt/ha. The average productivity of SRI millets is 3.06 mt/ha. The highest productivity reported 11.20 mt/ha and 3.9 mt/ha for SRI paddy and SRI millets respectively.

 

To conclude, community participation, particularly of women, is important. Perspective plans of the village and gram panchayat around people’s needs, aspiration, resources, opportunities are pivotal for the success in adapting to the new SRI practice. Orchestrating convergence between a large variety of stakeholders is needed to establish the complete gamut of forward and backward linkages to address the technical inputs of the methodology. Capacity building, creation of appropriate linkage structures, infrastructure support are critical in increasing agricultural crop yields.

 

Footnotes:

1. Sarguja, Surajpur, Balrampur, Jashpur, Raigarh, Bilaspur, Korba, Gariabandh, Dhamtari, Kanker, Kodagaon and Bastar

2. Some key dimensions of change triggered by the women collectives are: Increase in agricultural productivityof paddy, maize, millets, pulses and diversify into commercial crops like vegetables, oilseeds etc in the kharif 13 cropping cycle; Incorporating dietary diversity and nutritious crops in the overall cropping plan; Additional cash income from high value market oriented crops, leading to access to high protein food; Training on nutrition and supporting adoption of balanced diet in SHGs; and Facilitating women’s groups to understand and demand rights under public food security programmes.

3. The impact at village level and the ripple effect – Chhindbharri village, Nagari block: Annual food security established; each family earns an average additional annual income of Rs 25,400 from farming; all children attend school; community provided tap water facilities to all households through their contributions; SHG members influenced government line department to sanction and construct a health centre in the gram panchayat; community mobilized support from CREDA for bio gas and 56% families have begun using it; Government officials visited Chhindbharri to assimilate the learnings, replicate and scale-up the approach with other communities in the region.