Vanaja Ramprasad is the President of an Indian organization called Green Food, which supports small-scale farmers and links them with consumers in India. Here is the full-length version of the presentation she made at the Ist International Symposium of Urgenci in Aubagne in February 2004.

Consumer support and farmer food security

India is predominantly, an agrarian state. Of the India’s one billion population, more than two thirds of the population are farmers. Majority of them are small and marginal farmers. They depend solely on annual rainfall for the agriculture crop production. The rainfall is eratic as a consequence of global climatic change and water a scare resource with each passing crop season. Most of the land is cultivated under rain fed conditions. Yet it is also true that over exploitation of the water table and lack of efforts to conserve the soil has caused degradation and depletion of the natural resources base. The majority of the farming community most often live below the poverty line in utterly pathetic conditions. The farmers are unable to generate adequate income to meet their family requirement due to reduced crop and biomass production. The livelihood and food security of these farmers is threatened and their future is bleak. A latest survey of NSSO revealed that 40 per cent of the farmers have expressed the desire to quit the farming. The survey paints gloomy picture of the Indian farming community. More and more farmers are committing suicides due to increasing debt burden.

The scenario for GREEN Foundation in its project area is no different from larger context. The project area of GF is situated in Kanakapura Taluk, Bangalore Rural district of Karnataka state and Denkanikotai taluk of Tamil Nadu State in South India. The region represents the Eastern Dry Zone of Karnataka. The elevation in the zone ranges from 800 meter to 1500 meter above mean sea level. The average annual rainfall is between 680 mm to 890 mm. The soil type of the zone is mainly red loamy, non-gravelly soil with a narrow belt of lateritic soil. The important crop season is the Kharif. The principal crops grown in the region are ragi, rice, pulses, oil seeds and mulberry. The maximum temperature averages around 34 degrees Celsius during summer and it falls to around 15 degrees Celsius during winter. Barely around 9% of the zone is under forest cover.

GF’s project area encompasses approximately 90 villages. The baseline socio-economic data of the project area shows that the number of households is 4200. Most of the households belong to backward and SC/ST communities. About 68% of the population lives below the poverty line. Of the total farming community, 93% of them are small and marginal farmers having landholding below 5 acres. Around 90% of the farmers practice rain fed farming. The farmers have adopted multicropping to reduce the risk of total crop failure. Varied crop diversity exists in the area. Finger millet is predominantly grown as main food crop together with field bean, castor, sorghum, niger, mustard and amaranth. Paddy is cultivated under irrigated as well as in rainfed. conditions.

Over a decade, GF has been working in the field of conservation and development of agro-biodiversity in the project area. For GF, conservation of biodiversity has assumed paramount importance in the context of erosion of agro-diversity due to introduction of green revolution in the 1960s. As a result, the crop diversity base has been reduced to a few hybrid varieties, which entail high cost inputs. Over the years, the soil fertility has been degraded due to application of chemicals and fertilizers. As a result more and more external inputs are required to get certain level of production. Due to raise in the cost of inputs per unit of land, the small and marginal farmers and the poor farmers have been finding it extremely difficult to make the agriculture a viable proposition. This has lead the farmers to borrow funds for procuring agriculture inputs such as seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Due to the accumulation of debt the small and marginal farmers have been driven into the debt trap. Their livelihood and food security have been threatened.

Characteristics of the Green Foundation Project villages

With an aim to provide food security and enhance quality of life, GF has been promoting conservation and revival of traditional seed varieties in the project villages. GF has motivated and facilitated small and marginal farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture practices, which are low cost, environment friendly and sustainable. Several participatory crop improvement experiments have been conducted to enhance the yield performance of the food crops. The farmers are being trained in seed selection and crop improvement techniques. In a nutshell, GF has been working constantly to reduce the cost of production of food grains. In rainfed agriculture, the farmers dol not have a gainful employment round the year. Besides food production meets the requirements for les than ten months in a year. On an average, even in a good monsoon year, the farmers lack employment for at least 2-3 months. During the dry spell years, almost 50% of their time will be rendered unproductive. This results in the food insecurity of the resource poor communities due to drastic fall in the family income derived from agriculture. In order to eke out their living the farmers migrate to nearby towns and cities for wage employment. The trauma of relocation results in low morale and lower productivity.

GF has been making concerted efforts and is contributing to reverse this trend through its various interventions and to providing food and economic security to the small and marginal farmers in the project area. GF believes that empowering women contributes to overall development of the family. With this understanding, GF puts women in the center stage of development.. While community seed banks are managed by women there are self-help- groups of women engaged in economic activities. The objectives of these groups are to conserve and revive the traditional varieties of seeds, promote organic agriculture and production and marketing of biodiversity based value added products.

The women groups have been involved in production of value added products. The lean period of the farming community has been put into productive use. The women have been trained in production of biodiversity based value added products. The value added products are marketed both in local markets and through a Federation - an apex body of the community seed banks/self-help-groups. The income generated through the marketing of value added products support the needs of the farming communities partially. It also realized that the scale of production and marketing of organically grown products must be increased in order to check the migration of resource poor to the towns/cities. This can be achieved, in the present context, only if the market niche is created and developed for these value added organic products. Even the farmers have the apprehension that the organically grown value added products do not fetch good price in the market.

Providing Food Security and Livelihood Security to the Farmers

In this context, the biggest challenge lies ahead for GF in providing food security and livelihood security to the resource poor farmers. To accomplish this GF has planned several measures through Federation activities. Primarily the sanghas (farmer clubs) are being strengthened through trainings and skill up gradation to manage both the conservation of traditional seed varieties and produce the value added products. The sanghas require financial and technical. Support. To render this support, capacitating Federation members and make Federation a sustainable institution assume critical importance. This helps in biodiversity conservation and to establish a market for traditionally grown varieties at competitive prices. The federation leaders are able to conduct market operations like handling collection and distribution of products, upgrading quality of the products, identifying consumer preferences and on the whole managing from process to product of an item. It is also envisaged that widening the consumers base for indigenous varieties, would enhance the cultivation of these varieties, and would establish the link between seed and food.

GF has created channels for marketing through dealers, large retail outlets, and direct marketing through “friends of Green Foundation”. Channels for marketing these products are being strengthened. The products are displayed and supplied to large retail outlets. The products are also sold in trade fairs and exhibitions, to advertise the products and create a wider consumer demand. This strengthens the direct marketing to consumers..

Creating, building and strengthening the people institution helps providing food security to the resource poor farming communities. Federation is one such institution established by the GF. Federation with the help of GF creates and establishes new marketing channels for organically grown value added products, thus establishing a link between consumers and producers. Expansion of market for organic food helps the resource poor to produce traditional varieties on a large scale by adopting low cost, eco-friendly sustainable agriculture practices. Strategically, Federation contributes in conservation of agro-biodiversity by generating sustained income to resource poor farmers round the year.