“Freshly picked vegetables” has become the reality for Karan and his family. He grows 6 varieties of vegetables in his kitchen garden and named it ‘Garden of Eden’. This Garden has enough during the season to consume and also earned him Rs. 9000/- in three months by selling the surplus. He has gained respect as ‘Good Farmer’ in his village and nearby locality by helping 6 farmers to make their own ‘GARDEN of EDEN’.

Karan Tudu is a marginal farmer from Kiyajhuria village of Jhargram district in West Bengal. He used to cultivate 4-5 varieties of vegetables in his small plot for his family consumption. He used cow dung, good Microbe practice (GMP) in his nutrition garden to get better yield but for pest management, he hasn’t adopted any technique which can help in getting better results. His ways of cultivation take a new sight when he learnt about the new technique of preparing organic nutrition garden under U3 programme supported by Caritas India through the Misereor grant.

Karan Tutu attended the training conducted by U3 animator from Seva Kendra Kolkata titled “Amar Eden Garden’ based on integrated natural farming and introduced new ways to get most produces by building soil health. Small holders learned to prepare Lactic Acid (LAB) Fermented Fruit Juice (FFJ), Oriental Herbal Nutrients (OHN) is possible but the preparation of Indigenous Micro Organism (IMO) and Fish Amino Acid (FAA) IMO-1,2, OHN, FAA & FJJ and its use for high yield and productivity.

The trainee from Seva Kendra Kolkata has provided the input training to the beneficiaries on Nutrition Garden introducing a new technique.

Similarly, the trainee from Asansol Burdwan Seva Kendra has also provided input on the Nutrition Garden in Orgram village of Purba Burdwan. Sunita Mondal and her daughter Sandhya Mondal attended the training and made ‘GARDEN of EDEN’ in their village. Sandhya prepared LAB, FFJ, FAA, OHN & IMO by her effort, as guided by the animator, and applied them in the soil bed. She observes that the clay soil character changed and become softer and fluffier. The Nutrition Garden has provided additional income of Rs. 7500/- to her family.

This was made possible under the banner of CIDAL, Caritas India organized 3 days of training in July 2021 on Integrated Natural Farming Technique for her West Bengal partners, emphasizing on new method technique and upscaling the skill and knowledge of the partners based on new farming technology for replication. Intensive training and demonstrations were done on setting up on Integrated Nutrition Gardening, Pollution Free Poultry Farming (PFPF), Root Zone Fertigation in Tree planting and duck rearing. The training was facilitated by Dr. Haridas, a technical expert on Natural Farming, Caritas India.

Uttoran programme in West Bengal has focused a lot on Rights and entitlement, Livelihood and local partners’ institutional capacity building. This programme emphasises the People Led Development concept where the community intend to strengthen their effort in ensuring adequate and nutritious food, effort will be made for accessing their rights and entitlement and livelihood options through on-farm and off-farm through the strengthened community-based mechanism. Caritas and her local partners are engaged in promoting livelihood and climate-resilient and adaptive agricultural practices. She is promoting local seed varieties which would be used in varying climate scenarios like early sowing varieties, late sowing varieties, short-duration varieties. This cluster programme is implemented in 3 States- West Bengal, Karnataka & Andra Pradesh.

The 3rd phase of U3 programme focuses on Empowered communities’ foster climate resilient-cum-adaptive agriculture and livelihoods in West Bengal, Karnataka and Telangana, India through Community Ownership and Empowerment. 15 partners of U3 will be engaged effectively in the Lenten campaign of Caritas India as the Goal of U3 is very well in line with the Campaign theme “PEACE with the PLANET”.