Partners

There are 08 Project Partners Lokprerna, Leads, Support, SPWD, RDA, TSRD, Udyogini and Srijan Foundation,covering 22 blocks of 10 districts of Jharkhand. 27,630 MahilaKisan from 522 villages is started in financial year 2013-14.

By and large all the projects are doing work for improvement on existing livelihood of the women farmers focusing on food security aspects. Off-course some of them are giving exclusively focus on Lac cultivation and horticulture activities. But all the 08 project proposals are addressing the mandate of MKSP given as follows:

• Adoption of low-cost production protocols.

• Address nutritional security of women/child.

• Enhance biodiversity and enhances natural resource base.

• Address soil-health and environmental issues.

• Promote only those agro-practices that eliminate threats to health of women/child.

• Production technology should reduce drudgery for women farmers.

• Generate a large pool of bare-foot experts for knowledge dissemination of farm skills.

• High benefit -cost ratio is a desirable feature.

JSLPS Strategies to attain objectives under MKSP for the next five years:

i)Work out detail value chain analysis under MKSP projects, identification of most suitable value links to start and establish it to make the MKSP more viable and meaningful for the women farmers.

ii)Establish strong support system at village level by strengthening producer organization/community organization.

iii)Capacity building of producer group/PIA to equip them end to end solution by making their strong linkage on win situation with suitable private sector/corporate entities.

iv)Facilitation to the PIA for the best implementation of MKSP covering 550000 women farmers.

v)As MKSP is specialized project, arrange partnership for suitable and appropriate technical inputs.

vi)Capacity building and facilitation to PIA and livelihood collectives to strengthen their management capability to run their activity on their own in sustainable manner.

vii)Giving Support to the PIA and livelihood collectives for the convergence to upscale the existing successful model.

viii)To ensure getting/doing action research exploring locally available resources & material/breed as input supply.

ix)To facilitate PIA/livelihood collectives to establish agriculture as substantial livelihood opportunity through exploring distinctive dimension of it.

The Problematic

There are lots of demonstration of livelihood isolated activities have been taken place in Jharkhand. The impact of those projects is still null and ineffective in terms of providing sustainable and gainful livelihood opportunities to the women farmers. There is lack of support system in the village. Women farmers are still engaged as agriculture laborer and drudgery is still very high. There effort in agriculture has not been recognized as farmer. Ultimate profit which is negligible is going to the pocket of their husband/men. The support system in agriculture is very poor, farmers do not have any input supply support in terms of crop selection, seed selection, mono-cropping with layman package and practices, farming cost is also very high because yield is poor due to soil type due to lack of proper soil treatment support. In Jharkhand more than 80% of land is acidic. There are other issues like erratic rain, undulated land, lack of knowledge regarding which crop is suitable according to the soil condition and soil type .
There is several demonstrations of isolated livelihood activities. In result, productivity of the crop is good In some places but the farmers are not fetching getting good return/price of it due to absence of forward linkage support. Under MKSP it is mandate to extend support to the women farmer to ensure round the year food security by improving their existing livelihood. Women farmers are largely involved in productivity. Making improvement on productivity, drudgery reduction, nutrition security is not only solution. For that it is required to establish important value links and support system at village level first to protect optimum benefit of the farmers on sustainable manner. Developing this support system at input level and at forward linkage level will be required and it is very challenging task because a multi-disciplinary team can only help in the development of this system. This is the gap which can be filled by the support of ICCO resources. ICCO can support MKSP to ensure strong linkage of multi disciplinary stakeholder, which will help in the establishment of support system and value chain of the suitable sub-sector at village level.

Vision for the project

Develop a model of poor women farmers which can be reproduced all over the country, from 259 blocks/24 districts of Jharkhand linked with gainful livelihood opportunity on farming & allied activities by getting advantage of established value chain network right from input supply operators to the forwards linkage operators, at the same time provide them nutrition & food security and keep them protected from overload of work/drudgery.

Programmatic Approach

Penetration of support system on continuous basis is required at all the operator levels i.e. input, production, processing and forward linkage to make the programme successful, Multi-disciplinary expertise is required to establish the whole model. ICCO, ICIMOD, GIZ etc can help in consolidation of value chain exercise and implementation of value chain.
At the level of input and production level this project can raise support from ICAR supported institution HARP, Plandu Ranchi, IINRG, Ranchi, KVKs and from other institution like CFTRI Mysore, Birsa Agriculture College, PRADAN, Vikas Bazar network, CSA Hyderabad, CMSA Hyderabad, ASA Bhopal etc.
Strong and long term linkage of farmer producer group with Reliance, Big Bazar, Parle-agro, Hamdard, Baidyanath, Himalayan, other private companies is required at the processing & forwarding linkage operator level. Healthy linkage from the government Mandi & certifying agencies will make this programme more effective.
Since MKSP is very specialized kind of project exclusively focusing on adopting appropriate agriculture package & practices. Formation of MKSP dedication cell is required at state the level for continuous flow of facilitation and to all the stakeholders in the field. Team of expert will extend support in making detail project report of the PIAs which will be sanctioned during 2013-2014.
This team of professionals will ensure facilitation & support in the front of sub-sector studies and value chain analysis to identify the opportunities & its potential to get it leveraged to disadvantaged MahilaKisan. In phased manner agriculture and allied livelihood model will be taken up & demonstrated.

Output and Outcomes of the proposed project:

• Develop agriculture and agri allied based gainful sustainable livelihood model covering 550000 MahilaKisan 5000 revenue village of 750 gram panchayat/259 blocks..

• Promotion of farmers producer groups & getting it functional at least one in every 750 gram panchayat in the every front of value chain operators .

• Establish at least 5 major value chains i.e. Vegetable, Cereal crops/productivity enhancement, cost reduction by the strengthening & capacity building of more than 5000 village level producer group.

• Establish value chain network by developing & generating a large pool of bare-foot experts in very value links for knowledge dissemination of farm skills.