Adoption of Sustainable agriculture practices, greater access to Govt. schemes and entitlements along with strengthening of farmers collectives and marketing of produces have increased the income of the smallholder farmers under the “Agrarian Prosperity Program (APP)” in 10 villages of Jharkhand.

APP is implemented in 10 tribal villages in Palkot block of Gumla District of Jharkhand to support the marginal tribal communities for their socio-economic wellbeing. The objective of the program is to ensure food security and increased income through sustainable agriculture and various on-farm and off-farm income generation activities.

Along with it the project also emphasizes on greater participation of women and youth in the gram sabha to influence the decision-making process on household and village development issues.

Farmers collectives have better access to improved and dynamic knowledge-based platforms and services which has improved their ability in decision making and evolve potential strategies for marketing said Mr. Gosner, one of the Animator for the APP project during the review. Participation of women in more numbers in the Gram Sabha has yielded fruitful results in terms of the development of APP project villages. Five Farmers Producers organization has been transformed into Farmers producer Companies through support from NABARD to take up and handle the business of their produces with emphasis on lac, tamarind, jackfruit, rice, and high-value vegetables in the next 2-3 years period.

The key functionary of each of these 5 companies have been trained and ready to initiate aggregating agriculture and forest produce for business. Promotion of traditional seed banks and the new concept of promoting Farm Field School is also coming up well with technical guidance and support by Caritas India team.

These are some of the achievements shared by the partner at the Agrarian Prosperity Program (APP) review held in Naya Sawera Vikas Kendra project office Palkot Gumla Jharkhand from March 26 – 27, 2019.

Mr. Samir, Operation Manager of Caritas India gave input on the overall outcome of the APP program for this phase 2018-2022. He emphasized upon the need for meticulous planning and greater clarity of the technical issues by team lead of the partner. He also said that farmers producers companies should initiate their business at a small scale and gradually can expand to avail matching grant of a loan from Bank.

Dr. Pallab De, Thematic Manager provided technical inputs on the climate resilient farming practices/models, irrigation technologies. He said that quantitative data projected against the intended outcomes should always be supported with evidence. He emphasized on promoting farmer friendly simple technologies and crops to increase their food and income security.

Mr. Birendra Kumar the secretary of the partner organization said that we all need to work as a team for the greater success of the project.