NABARD supported initiatives to focus on Soil and Water Conservation for sustaining farm production

Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy as nearly 60% of the population of the country depend on agriculture and contribute 23% to the GDP.

Tenth Five Year Plan and National Agriculture Policy documents envisage a growth level of 4% in agriculture as against the average growth of less than 2% in the last 50 years. The last decade commencing from the 1990s was marked by post-green revolution fatigue and plateauing yield levels in many parts of the country. For a sustained 4% growth in agriculture, there is a need to improve productivity and cut down on costs by improving efficiency.

Therefore, an urgent need to collectivise smallholder farmers produces and provide a package of initiatives for transfer of technology, improving input use efficiency, promoting investments in agriculture both in private and in public sectors and creating a favourable and enabling economic environment. The emerging needs in the agriculture sector are, adoption of location-specific skill and knowledge-based technologies, promote greater value addition to agriculture produce, forge new partnerships between public, private and peoples’ institutions, to realise financial sustainability and compete in the market at the local level.

For transmitting the latest agriculture techniques to smallholder farmers’ field, orienting them to establish better relationship with local duty bearers and stakeholders, promotion of low cost traditional practices, value addition, etc. and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining power both for procuring inputs and select their produce the farmers’ forum programme is an appropriate and most suitable strategy for smallholder farmers’ upliftment.

Mr. Nisheet Kumar, District Development Manager (DDM) NABARD, Gumla visited five villages of Agrarian Prosperity Program area on 7^th of July 2018 to have an interaction with smallholder’s representatives of Farmers Producer Organisation (FPO) on-farm production, varieties of crop cultivation and to know the present challenges related to their existing agricultural practices.

He appreciated the noble work carried out by Caritas India and partners’ in such remotest tribal villages on food security. Caritas India and NABARD will further collaborate on soil and water conservation initiatives to ensure adequate facilities to improve the farm production of smallholder farmers in Jharkhand.