Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for residents of Asifabad District of Telangana state. Farmers are also pushed to engage in off-farm activities to generate additional income in order to support their families, due to the lack of opportunities in the village.

Mr. Bhagvanath Rao, 55, is a smallholder tribal farmer who lives with his family in Manikyapur village of Asifabad.. The family relies of farming as their primary source of income and cultivates Red Gram and Maize on their 1 acre of land. Apart from his agricultural activities, his family relies on Farm labour and MGNREGA work to support the needs of the family. Mr. Bhagvanth Rao makes Rs. 29000-35000 from all these activities in a whole year which is insufficient to feed the family forcing him to borrow money and thus stay in a perpetual cycle of debt every year.

Like Mr. Bhagvanath, there are many other farmers who are in a similar precarious state even as they toil hard to feed their families. Thus, to make the life of common farmers less miserable and avail of opportunities, Caritas India has reached out to the most marginalised farmers of Telangana state through her developmental programme- Uttoran with the support of Misereor. This programme provides opportunities to marginalised farmers for self-sustained livelihood and climate-resilient agricultural practices through the community-owned process.

Through the diocese of Adilabad- “Diocese of Adilabad Human Promotion Society” we are able to reach the most marginalized farmers, providing capacity-building training on a host of useful activities, including-  setting up of Nutritional Garden, Organic Farming, Strengthening of SHGs, Natural Pest Management/Integrated Pest management methods, Focus group discussion with low-income groups, Soil Management, Preparation of organic pest repellents and Off Farm activities to engage with the farmers. One of the initiatives taken by DAHPS is the off-farm support to the farmers through Pollution Free Poultry Farm (PFPF). In-depth training on the management of PFPF was provided by DAHPS, emphasizing on the entire process and procedures of setting up PFPF and preparation of Fodder. Mr. Bhagvanath was immensely inspired by the training that he was motivated to start the PFPF and become a motivator for PFPF units making biofertilizers. Uttoran programme has provided him 40 chicks of the Gramapriya breed weighing 1.5 to 2 Kgs when grown mature. He has realised the manifold advantages of  setting up of household PFPF including:

1. It is pollution free and hence there is no smell from the shed.
2. It provides healthy meat and eggs to his family as it is organic.
3. It provides additional income by selling organic meat and eggs.
4. It provides additional income from the compost generated from the bed.

The training on the preparation of fodder has guided him to give the right feed to the chicks, enabling him to sell them in the local market within 4 months of maintenance. Bhagvanath has sold 10 birds (18 Kgs) so far and earned Rs 5400 @Rs 300 per kg in the span of 9 months as extra Income. He is also selling the Eggs @ 5 Rs. So far, he has sold a total of 200 eggs earning himRs 1000.

He is also hatching the PFPF eggs with local Chicks for multiplying the chicks and increasing the poultry in his PFPF farm. With this new initiative of PFPF, the total earnings that have been added to his annual income are Rs 6400/-. In sum total Bhagvanath’s annual income increased to Rs 40,000/ from 35,000 earlier in the span of a few months. Bhagavan Rao is very pleased with the outcome and expresses his gratitude towards the Ujjwala project.