Doubling Farmers Income Through On Farm Reservoirs (OFR) Based IFS Models for Small Landholders of SAT Regions

Abstract

The authors are enthusiastic about sharing the success story of transforming forest hunters to agrarian culture with low cost scientific interventions like improved soil and water management, diversification, livestock interventions, knowledge sharing, etc leading to a debt free Chenchu. The inspiration behind writing this success story lies with the unprecedented response and profitability potential of the venture carried out at farmer’s field. The people of Petrallachenu village were suffering from mal-nutrition, debt trap, lack of water resources and low income. When the research team of Agri-consortium Research Platform on Water (ACRP-W) visited the village, we were surprised to see the tribes living away from modern technologies, engaged in hard labour during extreme heat, children and women looking emaciated. This was a real challenge before us to deliver them a successful life ahead with our scientific technologies. During PRA, we came across the poor status of farmer and thought of working in the region in a participatory way. We begin our intervention by convincing Shri M Pedda Ellaiah garu to spare some land for farm pond so as to exhibit our low cost easily adaptable technology which can later be upscaled by converging with ongoing government schemes. The whole story of success which was achieved in two years from 2016-18 have been narrated systematically in order to use similar models in similar agro-ecologies for small and marginal tribal farmers of rainfed agriculture in semi arid tropics. The authors are grateful to ICAR and GOI for funding this project under the theme “Development and Management of Integrated Water Resources in different Agro Ecological Regions of India” under ACRP-Water. The authors are also grateful to the PI , ACRP-Water, ICAR-IIWM, Bhubaneswar and Director, ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad for their co operation in doing this project in the farmers field.