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PRADAN’s Development Apprenticeship Programme helps college students work at the grassroots level to solve local issues

This is the second blog out of two where we will learn about rodent characteristics in four villages in Madhya Pradesh, India. In the previous blog we learned about the rodent species in 4 villages in Madhya Pradesh and how these small mammals damage crops at an average 25%.

India hosts the world’s most significant number of farmers and livestock. According to the 20th Livestock Census conducted in 2019, India has 535 million livestock animals, majorly comprising cattle (35.94%), Goats (27.80%), Buffaloes (20.45%), Sheep (13.87%) and the rest includes pigs, camels, horses, etc.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

One evening a traveler arrives in a small town in rural India. His plan is to reach his family in the main city. Yet it is late and he does not like traveling at night. He knocks the door of a small town hotel and asks the owner if there is still a bed for the night.

Regenerative Agriculture (RA) is built around the principles and practices that seek to promote healthier soil and water, promote biodiversity and restore ecosystems. Replacing traditional farming by RA is gaining its importance specially to protect, manage and restore nature. Various studies have shed light on the criticality to revitalize soil and the hydrology of farm landscapes to mitigate the effects of climate change and to sustain agriculture production systems.

This blog is to describe an initiative to promote a new land use for vast chunks of uplands in order to restore degraded lands and create robust livelihoods for small and marginal farmers in Agro-Ecological Zone VII (one of the 15 Agro-Ecological Zones in India).

Meet Shobha Tiwari. Though she hails from Chattisgarh state in India, she has lived and worked in Samnapur Block, Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh (MP), for most of her life. After her post-graduation, she was preparing for her M.Phil when she joined Ekta Parishad in 1999.

There is a natural need for farmers to learn from each other which cropping patterns, cultivars, irrigation techniques, pest and disease control, or poultry/livestock rearing practices work and which do not work. In other words, what are ‘Good Practices’ to follow and what are bad practices to avoid. Such Horizontal Learning by farmers is practical and demand-driven, not undertaken for academic interest.

If the development sector has to be seen in a better light, then the onus rests on the practitioners themselves.