Project Detail

Adaptation of and Capacity Building on Low-External Input Sustainable,and Intensive Cultivation(LEISIC) practices for enhancing livelihoods security of resource poor women and tribals.

The project was proposed for the documentation and practices adopted by Social Development and Research Institute and Prayas, and experimentation on the major Low External Input, Sustainable and Intensive Cultivation (LEISIC) Practices mainly in soil amelioration and crop tending; setting up demonstration and awareness of LEISIC practices for women and tribals and providing livelihoods? security to resource-poor sections of the society, by adapting suitable LEISIC techniques. The project consisted of two components: Demonstration on farm productivity, effectiveness of Low External Input Techniques (LEISIC) techniques at farmer fields and capacity building of the communities for adaptation of the approaches. The adaptation component consisted of systematic documentation and experimentation of activities, laying the very foundations of the approach, the optimum combination of techniques, processes and the inputs those are appropriate with the conditions of poor communities. Documentation involved studying best practices of other initiatives. Experimentation focussed on validating parameters in soil amelioration (through composting), vegetables and crop tending.

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Project Snapshot

Grantee:

Resources and Livelihood Team, Prayas(Energy Group)

Country:

India

Area Of Work:

Climate Change Mitigation

Operational Phase:

Phase 2

Grant Amount:

US$ 31,157.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 22,523.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 647.00

Project Number:

SGP/GEF/IND/OP2/02/MS07

Start Date:

3/2002

End Date:

8/2003

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Project Characteristics and Results

Notable Community Participation

More than 340 farmers approached the Grantee to learn and share their results. During the analysis it was learnt from the village communities, that due to continuous capacity building workshops and training by the Grantee, nearly 70% communities were able to access monetary resources, varying from $ 500 to $ 1500 per annum from various Government departments as individuals and also as self-help groups. The training had greatly enhanced their vision, confidence, skills in managing resources, maintaining transparency and sharing experiences, knowledge and ways of doing things. The communities also made both cash and kind contributions in taking and adopting technologies.

Replication of project activities

The local agricultural officials were also keen to replicate the technologies on a wider scale. Nearly more than 150 visitors/officials visited the NGO for replicating the results and adopting the technologies in their areas.

Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples

The project established linkages with 3 more GROs, than outlined in the project. More than 25 trainings at different levels, at times of crop operations were performed, in order to ensure effective ways of doing LEISIC approach.

Capacity - Building Component

The project laid stress on the adoption of Low External Inputs for Agricultural Practices. There was considerable reduction in the external water input required for composting by adoption of simple techniques of covering the compost heaps to avoid loss of the excess moisture during the rains, as well as reducing the moisture loss after the rains. The villagers although aware, never practiced such operations, due to mindsets of lack of productivity. They were trained for effective use of rainwater for preparing useful compost. More than 40 Households from more than 8 GROs from Konkan Region successfully used these techniques in the incidence of high rainfall and adequate availability of biomass.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

yes

Project Results

A demonstration plot in nearly 2 hectares of land with twenty-one different crops and vegetables was developed; a questionnaire was prepared, keeping in view the lessons from the demonstrations and the communities were involved for documentation of grassroot level initiatives. The approach in the third cropping season was able to reap 79% productivity as recommended in the package of practices (using hybrid and chemical fertilizers). It also created better soil conditions and more or less by the end of the fourth season the crop productivity reached to nearly 100% of the recommended dosages. Saving in the water used for cultivation was achieved especially due to improved soil conditions and application efficiency. Almost 34% increase in organic Carbon and 11% increase in Phosphorus content were achieved due soil amelioration efforts. The above results were achieved using zero chemical inputs and no external market based inputs expect for the seeds. Hence, the cost of market based inputs (i.e cash requirements) was almost zero.
Challenges: There were many challenges occurring at different activity levels. Initially it was a difficult task to identify and train people for conducting experimentation and collection of data; to tap specialists from different fields for broadening the range and in-depth training; to ensure that the target and training groups got better technical support and to maintain a high level of motivation among the beneficiaries.
Lessons learned: The project provided sufficient learning in terms of implementation of innovative techniques. It was strongly felt that the experiments should be field based, demand driven, relevant to the ground reality, and that farmers should reliably take care of data collection and documentation of demonstrations. Villagers were also ready to share costs once the technologies were acceptable to them, leading to benefits.

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