Farmers in central India face growing uncertainty

   

Rural communities are falling dangerously behind

• Farm holdings are small and up to 2/3 of land holdings are not fit for agricultural production.  Even the arable land is becoming less productive
• Ground water is becoming scarcer and most small landholders practice rainfed agriculture and subsistence farming
• Income is about $260/yr per person, about 40% below the state average of $430/yr
• Families must leave their land to find work.  About 70% migrate after every monsoon season as they cannot farm their own land. This annual upheaval destroys child health, education and nutrition
• The situation is spiraling out of control. Worsening agro-climatic, socio-economic and political factors are forcing more families into debt every year. Over 1,200 desperate farmers have committed suicide in the last 2 years in this region..

What do they need?

According to the communities themselves, they need new livelihood opportunities that:

1. Provide new and stable income stream that reduces pressure to borrow or migrate
2. Are sustainable (will last for the long-term and won't threaten livelihood of future generations)
3. Connect to the new and fast-growing markets in the rest of the country, markets that are broad & deep

Learning from past failures, new development alternatives should not:

1. Require farmers to make big investments every year
2. Expose them to greater risks
3. Jeopardize subsistence food production
4. Require middlemen to reach distant buyers or transport fragile/perishable products
5. Depend on unfamiliar or unreliable technologies that don't have adequate local support

Why plant BioFuel trees?

The campaign focuses primarily (but not exclusively) on planting BioFuel trees because:

1. BioFuel trees are one of the few things that grow productively in the kind of land available
2. Their cultivation does not have to displace or compete with food production (purely incremental)
3. The market for "oilseeds" for BioFuel will become enormous - practically inexhaustible
4. Demand for energy exists everywhere, so producers are less dependent on markets
5. The technologies involved (water management, agriculture, oil-extraction) are simple and familiar
6. Unlike crops, the trees don't need require re-planting and reinvesting every year
7. The trees are remarkably hardy and drought-tolerant - they actually help farmers reduce their overall exposure to climate risk
8. They can provide a small, but new and reliable income stream for the long term

 

 

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An initiative of CleanStar Trust, a non-profit organisation registered in New Delhi, India
© 2008 CleanStar Trust