Gosner Gudia happily shares that now he can provide a good care and education to their children which was a dream. Gosner was a marginal farmer from Orbenga village of Jharkhand but his production was not enough to support his family five. He used to migrate to GOA for labour at a minimum wage of Rs. 70/- per day.

The situation got changed after being associated with Agrarian Prosperity Program and he learnt organic procedures of doing agriculture.

Jharkhand ranks 18 out of 23 states in the Indian Human Development Index. The monsoon brings soil erosion and high runoff rate resulting in low-yield subsistence agriculture.

In the last five years, Caritas India’s Agrarian Prosperity Program has enabled food security of 1111 most marginalised farm families through environment-friendly farming practices in Jharkhand.

Supported by Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF), the program has promoted Organic farming which has shown tremendous result and created good impact and interest amongst the community. The food basket is diversified with pulses, cereals like wheat, maize, minor millets and vegetables in their backyard by collective farming initiatives now as compared to one kharif paddy as before.

The program has collaborated with Birsa Agriculture University, Kanke, Ranchi to provide technical assistance to the farmers. This has helped the smallholder farmers to increase their soil nutrient through recommended soil health test in consultation with the University. Farmers are now practising crop rotation and diversification on a regular basis to maintain soil health of which boron amendment is important.

Cropping intensity has increased up to 180% as compared to 116% before with farmers’ income increased up to 40% which is a major achievement of the project. In the phased-out villages farmers groups are very much functional and taking major decisions about farm operations and marketing of their produces by establishing farmer’s forum. Through the nutritional garden, 1180 marginalised farm families have diversified their daily food intake by having 8-10 different recommended vegetable varieties.

Delegates from SCIAF visited APP areas to witness the change in the people’s lives and interacted with four smallholder farming families. Delegation was headed by Most Rt. Rev. Bishop Brian Thomas McGee, Mr. Alistair Chad Dutton, Director SCIAF, Mr. Paul Drury, Fundraising Manager & Ms. Sadie Scullion, Program Officer, SCIAF.

“We consider agrarian prosperity program as our extended family in India. We are glad to see the changes that brought into the lives of people through this program. It is good to see those who were migrating now became progressive farmers, women’s involvement and participations are clearly visible. We would like to thank Caritas India and its implementing partner organisation for making this project a success.”, shared Mr. Alistair after meeting the people from the village.