Brief of S.E.N.R
School of environment and natural resources has worked on various issues related to livelihood development, conservation of natural resources, forest fires, invasion of invasive species, waste management and out migration issues. School of environment and natural resources have established five farmer producer organisations in Almora, Pithoragarh, Tehri-Garwal and Champawat districts.
- With support of local farmers SENR have arranged the most important resource for this project “land resource” in an aggregated form in each of the village cluster chosen so that large scale cultivation of vegetables, spices, medicinal plants, aromatic plants, and non-timber forest resources could be done easily.
- We have also linked our farmers with schemes of agriculture department in Tehri and Almora for fodder production so that enough green fodder is available for livestock and dung and leaf litter could be used as manure.
- These farmer organisations will also plant wild fruit trees, fodder grasses in Van Panchayat areas in coming monsoon.
- This will full fill the fodder and leaf litter related requirement of farmers in near future.
- Doon University have also identified forty native species of trees, shrubs, grasses which will be introduced in Van Panchayat which will also help in developing Apiculture as adequate forage for bees will be available round the year.
- These farmer producer organisations have also been linked with HRDI and this will help in reducing the problem of illegal trade of medicinal plants from some of these villages.
SWAT ANALYSIS OF FPCs
STRENGTH
- Elementary awareness and interest for vegetable, spices and M.A.P cultivation is present.
- Land is available for production of vegetable, spices and M.A.P.
- National and global market for proposed vegetable, spices and M.A.P to be cultivated in this program exists.
- Man power is available.
- Relationship of many farmers with regional Garmin bank is already developed.
- Manure for the field is available frequently.
- Agency like Herbal Research and Development Institute High Altitude Plant Physiology and Research Center, and some private organizations in particulate Ausadhigarbh Himalaya Pvt. Ltd. has technical knowledge for establishing nurseries and doing large scale plantation of vegetable, spices and M.A.P.
- Manpower with knowledge of preparing seedlings, seed of rare and threatened plants targeted species are available.
- Lack of weather forecast systems.
- Existence of middleman in all Uttarakhand in M.A.P and N.T.F.P Trade.
- None existing information sharing mechanism even in relevant government departments.
- Self-help producers groups do not have any experience of large scale trade.
- Non existing profit sharing structure in self-help groups who will grow the M.A.Ps.
- Links with market for the sale of crop has not been fully established yet.
- Favorable climatic conditions.
- Strong Market demand.
- Opportunity to establish a well-functioning irrigation system through convergence.
- Farmers are interested for cultivation of M.A.P in private land.
- Opportunity of increase in annual income of the family by propagation of M.A.P is existent.
- Opportunities of strengthening of village based organization through the project.
- Opportunity of establishing cluster’s identity as the M.A.P production area.
- Opportunity of developing village based entrepreneurs.\
- Opportunity of lessen the trend of migration in search of livelihood.
- Non availability of processing centers.
- Non availability of advance land preparation, irrigation equipment.
- No idea of weather trends during different seasons.
- High Chances of Threft of valuable M.A.Ps.
- Non availability of planting stock on time.
- Natural calamities such as scanty or excessive and erratic rainfall, less snowfall.
Based on our above interventions we is quite confident that by the financial support of World Bank, Uttarakhand can be developed as a medicinal plant hub which will be exporting its raw material to Europe and also to leading companies of Ayurveda in India. This program of supported by HANS Foundation will be mile stone success.
Term end evaluation will be conducted at the end of each year of proposed program. For effective planning and implementation of the activities under the scheme, Programme management consultants will be permitted to be engaged both at State and block levels for the duration of the scheme. The Project Management unit shall consist of team of private organizations and startup companies of farmer. The scheme will also be subjected to mid-term evaluation after 1 – 1½ years of its implementation. The funds for this will be utilized and provided for in the Annual Action Plan by the Project Management.
Implementation agencies will monitor the program by field visits in different location during the tenure of project and submit the report to funding agency
Mapping of all the available natural resources in the proposed clusters was done by our team for getting an understandable picture of present status and Stature of the resources of the cluster. We incorporated the private lands, soil, forest, water, and topographical / geo-specific factors in this study.
The major portion of available private land in high altitude and mid altitude zones where ever possible will be used for vegetable, spices and M.A.P cultivation. As majority of male and female population including young and mature are still residing in these villages. In all these villages female and male members of the community work together in agriculture. These people can work with us in our program aimed at conservation of medicinal plants.
Women perform the responsibilities of home; looking after cattle’s, work in field, collect fodder for their animals and also work for social welfare. Male members of the community help them in agriculture, fodder collection. Many of the male members of the community work as daily wages labors in different government schemes. In all the villages the famers have insignificant and meager financial potency for adaptation of new techniques and crops, which is also applicable for introduction of vegetable, spices and M.A.P and production. To overcome these problem self-help producer groups of farmers will be shaped in every village. We did a SWOT analysis in different villages with community members to identify the possibilities of cultivation of medicinal plants as main stream agriculture practice.
We have prearranged several environmental related awareness camps in the remote village area besides several short-term training programs on commercial cultivation (agro- technology in agriculture) of vegetable, spices and M.A.Ps. In addition organization already distributed plenty of planting material of vegetable, spices and M.A.Ps to local farmers.
The Proposed project will be implemented in partnership with different farmer startup companies the implementation strength of the partner on the dynamics involved in production of medicinal plants will focus on primary issues such as:
- Identification of critical volume of targeted species which would be required for a sustainable business of produces which are being produced at private land by the community.
- Procedures involved for acquiring exit (Ravanna) pass for the production done at private land.
- Developing a realistic target of production of each identified medicinal plant species focusing on the man power involved in the process and the final outcome in the terms capital.
- Strategizing a standard policy for plantation of medicinal plant species based on the geographical conditions of village.
- Identification of the market for the targeted species and there economical dynamics involved such as cost benefit analysis for the each SHG based on present production level and future target, developing strategy for the implementation, and guiding principles for developing resource base, for medicinal plant.
The project would have an impact on the social, economic and environmental aspects of the project area. Although final output and impact indicators will be developed through participatory processes involving communities at commencement of program implementation, an indicative list of indicators is provided below:
- Total Area (in hectare) brought under vegetable, spices and M.A.P cultivation
- Number of Nurseries established for different vegetable, spices and M.A.P species
- Number of farmers cultivating the vegetable, spices and M.A.Ps species
- Number post harvesting amenities established including drying and grading sheds, chopping and grinding equipment, and aromatic oil distillation units.
- Percentage reduction in illegal extraction of vegetable, spices and M.A.Ps from forest adjoining with the project areas
- Number of market linkages developed for different species
- Percentage of total produce sold after completion of project period
- Number of farmer start-up companies formed, and numbers of clusters developed.
- Profitability analysis of farmer start-up companies at every six month during entire tenure of project.
- Number of local people developed as service provider/resource person with enhanced capacity to ensure sustainability of the program and the community institutions.
- Increase in household income through project interventions (Rs/hh/yr).
- Community based organizations including farmers start-up company, Federations etc. will develop a greater capacity to deal with external agencies. The organized and scaled up program will increase M.A.P production significantly. This will not only ensure economic viability but also the long term sustainability of the Federations.
- Over 1000 Nali (200 Hectare) of private lands to be brought under M.A.P cultivation resulting in a percent decrease in illegal extraction of endangered species.
- Over 200 local resource person are aimed to be working as service providers on sustained basis resulting in cultivation, maintenance and processing of M.A.Ps with standard Package of Practices (PoPs).
The Aim of the proposed project is “to promote rural livelihoods and enhance incomes through the cultivation of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (M.A.Ps) in an environmentally sustainable manner.”
- The project activities are designed based on following methodologies:
- Capacity Building along with technical and regulatory support.
- Planting material production
- Promotional cultivation
- Establishment of market linkages
Selection of the villages will be done using cluster approach in all districts where the livelihood program is to be implemented. Combination of species will be designed on the bases of soil type and altitudinal gradient. Data of land availability and estimated productions will be used for designing the clusters so that at the time of plant material collection minimum possible cost could be incurred for labor and transportation heads.
Selection of progressive farmers will be done for the first phase and gradually saturation approach will be adapted to include all the farmers in second and third phase of the program. These farmers will be facilitated by external resources persons to establish nurseries, produce plants at cluster level and cultivation at large scale. Our staff and external agencies will monitor the program rigorously.
Drying, storage facilities will be provided at each watershed or at the juncture of watersheds from where the produce could be transported to a central facility. These facilities will be owned by the Farmer Producer Companies. FPCs will be linked with different buyers at national and international level.
- To identify adaptation levels of standard packages of practices (PoPs) for the cultivation of identified species of medicinal plans.
- To identify and introduce new methods of seed sowing and harvesting to reduce the cost of manual labor.
- To identify and introduce post harvesting techniques/methods including drying, grading sheds, chopping and grinding at village level through farmers.
- Developing cadre of farmers trained in value addition, business and trade of medicinal plants
Linking the farmer groups with company ensuring buyback agreement at the inception of the project.
Following steps will be followed under the Action Research
- Joint assessment (farmers Comp & Implimentation Agency) of the situation
- Creation of monitoring Committee (among the farmers) for data collection
- Analysis and dissemination of assessment findings
- Joint design of action plan (Farmers/implementation agency)
- Implementation of Action Research (cultivation+ harvest +post-harvest) & data collection–Joint data analysis (monitoring committee & private partner)
- Development of Plan for scaling up and wider Implementation
- Consolidation & learning and its dissemination.
- Scope analysis on availability of identified medicinal plant, status of seed and seedling availability and scope of trade volume.
- Training on cultivation of medicinal plants through direct sowing by the use of latest equipment’s
- available.
- Farmers will be linked with Herbal Research and Development Institute (HRDI) and registered as cultivator of medicinal plant.
- This list of registered farmers will be shared with Bhesaj Sangh, Uttarakhand for appropriate action.
- Assess the cost reduction in manual labor in land preparation and seed sowing by the committee formed.
- Data will shared with all the farmer groups engaged in the action research, at Gram panchayats and accordingly action will be taken.
- Monitoring Committee & Farmer groups will be trained on good agriculture and cultivation practices (GACP) developed by WHO for the trade of medicinal plant worldwide
- Committee will encourage the farmers to adopt organically certified soil growth promoters and
- plant growth promoters to reduce the dependency on cow dung manure and output data will be collected.
- Training will be organized on-integrated pest management, standard operating procedures on-harvesting, technical planning of post harvesting, inspection and sorting, primary processing, drying, bulk packaging and leveling, storage and transport methods.
- Data will be gathered with the help of committee formed on above mentioned procedures time to time and shared with the farmers at Gram Panchayat.
- Sale of produce to the company identified for buyback.
- Identification of Farmers
- Strengthening of Farmers Company
- Exposure Visit
- Farmers linkage with Bank
- Identification of buyback company
- Agreement for buyback with agreed company
- Training-on techniques, tools to reduce on farm labor cost on land preparation and seed sowing.
- Training-on techniques of inter cropping and pure cropping of identified medicinal plant.
- Formation of committee-monitoring and data collection and its training
- Purchase of plant materials and dissemination
- Cultivation of medicinal plants as planned and Its monitoring and data collection by committee formed.
- Continuous hand holding support by the experts
- Harvesting and data collection
- Scaling up planning –based on market demand
- Post Harvesting activities and data collection
- Report preparation and dissemination
- Three fold increase in the income of the farmers in comparison to cultivating traditional crops.
- A critical mass /Cadre of farmers developed as businessman/traders of medicinal plants
- Trained cadre of farmers on WHO’s GACP slandered and medical plant
- Established linkages with market/company
- 40% reduction in the cost of land preparation
- Published report on the action research outputs and its dissemination.
- 100% cost of the project recovered during project tenure
- Women farmers dealing in the business of medicinal plant
- More than 3000 people will get direct and indirect employment through the project activity.
NUMBER SPEAKS
We always ready for
a challenge.
Very soon info updates available