Support Small Farmers in India

It’s 1 o’ clock in the afternoon and Omkar is ploughing his field while his daughter is sitting and playing songs on her mobile phone. He seems happy and is enjoying his work, but this wasn’t the case earlier, as he says.  “Farming was a difficult task earlier and I could not even grow enough for my family as we had to rely on rain water for irrigation and I had no money to adopt modern farming methods. But after Seva Mandir set up its seed bank and helped me and others to set up a lift irrigation system, things changed. Now the yield is double what it was earlier.”

Omkar is a small-scale farmer in Kaya village, Girwa block, southern Rajasthan. Agriculture is the only way he can earn a living as he has no skills which can be transferred to any other occupation. He grows wheat and maize in his field for his family’s consumption and sells the surplus. Omkar used to buy seeds from the city shops, but this was expensive because of the transportation costs. This made it hard for him to achieve a surplus. He was also heavily dependent on monsoons as there was no other water available for irrigation. Insufficient rainfall would result in crop failure. This was the reality for most farmers in the region. Because of the hilly terrain, low rainfall and lack of fertile land the farmers would struggle to even grow for their subsistence.

So Seva Mandir set up a seed bank in that area. A seed bank is a place where seeds are preserved and stored. They are situated in villages. The main objective of a seed bank is to maintain the local biodiversity of the area and provide good quality seeds to the farmers. These seed banks are funded and maintained by Seva Mandir. Farmers take good quality seeds on credit. When they harvest their crop, they repay the seed bank with 25% more than the amount of the seed taken. No cash is required and farmers are now less dependent on the market for seeds.

In addition, with the help of the farmers, Seva Mandir has set up lift irrigation in a 80:20 partnership, where 80% was contributed by Seva Mandir and 20% by 20 farmers of that area. Now Omkar‘s farm produce has doubled and he is able to sell his surplus in the market and earn a living.

We thank you for your continued support to our “Provide Enough Food for Poor Farmers in India” project.

Kind regards

Atul Lekhra and Seva Mandir Team

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Links:

• Seva Mandir's Website
• Seva Mandir's Facebook Page