Self reliant - economically and nutritionally

Pedabidda is a Gram Panchayat headquarters which is 15 Km away from the Mandal headquarters i.e. Ananthagiri of Visakhapatnam District in the State of Andhra Pradesh. A total of 65 tribal families reside in the village. The main livelihoods of these families are agriculture, Non Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) marketing and daily wages.

Under agriculture, paddy, redgram, blackgram, niger, greengram, etc are the important crops in terms of consumption and limited sales in case of surplus. Under NTFP, Marking Nuts, Myrobalons, Amla, Clearing Nuts, Nux Vomica, Hill Brooms, etc are the main source of income.

Indira Kranthi Patham (IKP) in collaboration with Kovel Foundation, an NGO working exclusively for tribal empowerment has initiated Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) project in Tribal Project Management Unit (TPMU), Paderu area in the year 2006-07. Non Pesticidal Management (NPM) was promoted in this cluster of 5 village/hamlets including Pedabidda village.

Most of the cultivated crops are rain-fed and during interaction with the Sasya Mithra groups, it was found that though considerable amount of back yard space is available, they were not using it. Moreover, all these families have to go to Damuku, a nearest weekly market place which is 8 Kms away for purchase of daily provisions including vegetables which are enough only for 3-4 days in the week. This leads to lack of sufficient nutrition. Other than this weekly market/shandy, they have to go to SrungavarapuKota which is 34 Kms away for purchase of vegetables and other domestic goods.

As part of the interventions under the said project, the NGO had facilitated farmers to go for growing kitchen gardens in the available backyard space and nearby farming area for which they were given Vegetable MiniKits containing seeds of Tomato, Brinjal, Ridge Guard, Bitter Guard, Lady’s Finger, Beans, Onion, Bottle Guard and Pumpkin.

Depending on the size of available space with each family, 4 cents to 30 cents of land has been used for this activity. The vegetables produced were used for consumption and the surplus was sold within and outside the village. Most surprisingly, they have earned a total of Rs 1,25,700/- income from the surplus sales. The per family income ranged from Rs 1400 to Rs 10,900/-. The family wise and commodity wise details are given below.

Farmer wise income realized for the period from July 2009 to Dec 2009

Ms Manjari Laxmi w/o Atchanna said she did not know of growing vegetables. Kovel Foundation has supplied vegetable seeds and supported while growing vegetables. I have prepared the land and applied “Ghanajeevamrutham”and I was able to reduce external inputs cost besides cultivating organic vegetables. I have earned Rs 10,900 as gross income and Rs 5,000/- was saved in the post office after meeting expenses for personal needs.

Ms Pedakapu Bangaramma w/o Rambabu while narrating her experience said that she had grown vegetables in 10 cents of land and got good yield. She sold all the vegetables to the Ashram school in the village with the intention of providing quality vegetables to the children though she would have got more money if she had sold it in the weekly shandy.

Source: Indian Grameen Services