Overall Goal :
Ecological and functional literacy for climate friendly and sustainable model of Family farms and Land use t by tribal farmers for long term food, nutrition and income security through training, capacity building and exposure of local youth.

Context :
The districts of Rayagada and Koraput form part of the Eastern Ghat regions, a discontinuous range of mountains spread over 75,000 sq. km., and 1700 kms long along the east coast of India. Described as a water tower, a carbon sink, a perennial food basket and a gene reservoir, the region has more than 100 different indigenous communities, who despite the richness of the region are amongst the poorest in the country.

The districts under the project are no exception. More than 70% of the population of these districts is below the official poverty line. 43% children below 5yrs of are stunted and nearly 40% underweight, as reported in the National Family Health Survey, 2021. Much of the poverty and hunger is aggravated by loss of forest cover and goes hand in hand with environmental degradation. Time series data for Odisha state indicates that Rayagada and Koraput were the top two districts that recorded the highest FCL (Forest Cover Loss) with mean change rates of 13.81 km2/year and 7.17 km2/year, respectively, over a period from 2001 to 2019. This has also sent in motion rapid decline of land resource caused by increased erosion and soil runoff. The tribal communities traditionally practice shifting cultivation, which supplemented their hunting and food gathering from the forest. A wide range of crop combinations, including millets, pulses, squash, would be cultivated in a swidden patch, providing a diverse and rich nutrition. Tribals consider the forest run off as vital for fertilizing the swidden land, while the also enabling the cultivated patch to regain its forest cover patch in a matter of few years. Now, all these functions have been severely affected. In addition, climate change has also affected rainfall patterns. The long periods of gentle continuous rain characteristic of the Koraput monsoons in the past, has been replaced largely by much more erratic, short heavy showers, including cloud bursts leading to landslides, and severely impacting upland cultivation.

All this has lead tribal farmers to give up much of their traditional crops, and turn to commercial monocrops, that necessitate excessive use of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. There has thus been a loss of agricultural biodiversity, with many of local traditional crop varieties that were cultivated and preserved over generations being seriously endangered. The traditional seeds and traditional cropping patterns were decided by women. With change to commercial crops, women’s decision making role in agriculture is reduced.

Much of the cultivation by the indigenous farmers is on hilly slopes, where the customary rights of the tribal farmer is not recognized. The per household tribal land ownership is 1.12 acres, with more than 70% being easily degraded sloping lands. Here too cultivation necessitates increasingly longer fallow periods. Without proper soil fertility measures, large areas of these lands are rapidly changing to uncultivable fallows.

The Project :
The current project seeks to address the problems through participatory Farmers’ Field Schools(FFS) with demonstration plots, lead by youth eco-leaders (trained in a previous project) to help indigenous communities reclaim degraded rainfed uplands. There will be special focus on women, as despite being equal partners in agricultural work they are mostly invisible when it comes to sharing the benefits or decision making. The project is based Agragamee’s successful eco-village development model supported by Karl Kubel Stiftung the IKI project ‘Climate Smart Agriculture for Small Farmers’. The project will compliment collaborations with the government under the Millet Mission and National Mission for Natural Farming, for promotion of indigenous crops, and with CSR(Corporate Social Responsibility) groups for addressing climate change.