As soon as the group settles down, Churwa Bedia, a local farmer, stands up near the chair and begins the lessons for the day.
"One of the best ways to get rid of expensive fertilizers is to mix the cow dung, cow urine, neem leaves, Karanj leaves and Calotropis leaves in an earthen pot and leave it to decompose for seven days. With hardly any expenditure involved, it works as well as any expensive fertiliser and you save on the pesticides too," shares Bedia.
As the fellow farmers ask questions about the preparation, use and benefits of the Aushadhiya Matka Khad (Medicinal Earthen Pot Fertiliser), he attempts to answer most of them.
"Till two years ago, I too was using chemical fertilisers in my two-acre farm to grow rice and vegetables but could not arrest the gradual decrease in yield. The soil had become useless and hardly retained water. But the use of Aushadhiya Matka Khad has brought down the input cost on fertilisers, the crop yield has improved and the crop now gets a better price in the market," says Bedia.
He then demonstrates the method of making the organic fertilizer, encouraging fellow farmers to try their hand at the process immediately. Once the exercise is over, the group disperses, with the farmers committed to try the process in their fields and discuss the results at the next gathering.
These were the proceedings of the Farmers Field School, a farmer-to-farmer learning program that the residents of Dublabeda have been organising every month for over a year now. The curriculum of the school includes not just making and using organic fertilisers but also imparting technical skills on crop management, farm design, soil, water, pest, livestock and energy management.
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Most of the farmers in Dublabeda have small land holdings. Like in most of the villages in the uplands of Jharkhand, these farmers had been coping with the fallouts of the Green Revolution of the 1970s. The farmers had long shifted to the mono-crop culture, where only one high-yielding variety crop was produced. This led to rapid increase in the usage of expensive chemical-based synthetic (artificial) fertilisers and pesticides.
As the farmers became more production-oriented for cash rewards, the input costs increased consistently. Moreover, as farmers concentrated more on agricultural produce, their dependency on and attention to forest gathering, livestock and other alternate incomes declined. This made it unfeasible for small farmers to continue a profitable agricultural practice.
As a result, most of the villages had been facing migration of youth who left home in search of work as daily wage labourers.
Understanding the pattern and seeking to help farmers cope with the situation, the concept of Farmers Field Schools was initiated by WeltHungerHilfe, a German development agency as part of its Sustainable Integrated Farming System (SIFS) program. Under SIFS, WeltHungerHilfe, along with local non-profit Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD), has been promoting innovative methods of reducing input costs of farming and integrating farm income with other rural resources such as livestock and fishing in the villages of Jharkhand and West Bengal.
Through the field schools, farmers have now learnt the concepts and methods of organic farming, cultivating fallow land with less capital inputs, mixed farming, duck rearing and advanced methods of crop yield intensification.
"Convincing farmers to move away from the capital intensive farming methods propagated by the much-hyped Green Revolution to the diversified ways of integrating their resources required a certain kind of training. But we have noticed that training sessions by an external trainer do not produce the expected results. There is often a mismatch in the understanding between the trainees and the trainer with very little practical hands-on work. This is when we decided to develop these schools where farmers learn from a fellow farmer through practice," says Anshuman Das of WeltHungerHilfe.
For conducting these classes, a farmer trainer is selected from a farmers' group, who is willing to do trials of new methods in his own field and has good communication and leadership skills. This farmer is then trained by a facilitator from SPWD on the curriculum. He imparts the same training to the other members of the farmers' group, using his own field for the demonstration.
"Though there are specific prescribed sessions to be followed, it is the farmers' group that decides on the date, timing, venue, specific topic of discussion and sequence of topics," says Sanjay Kumar of SPWD. He informs that about 150 farmers have already been trained as trainers in Ranchi and Deoghar districts; and they are now imparting training to other farmers in the field schools.
One such farmer who has benefitted from the initiative is Mohan Bedia. He learned the innovative and cheap ways of fencing his vegetable farms in the field school.
"The shrub fencing could not prevent animals from entering the farm. Besides, putting a shrub fencing every year in every farm was expensive and labour intensive. Then, in one of the classes in the school, we discussed how to install movable bamboo fencing. I can use one fence in several farms in turn and for several years to protect my crops from the cattle. As I have a lot of bamboo plants, I don't have to spend anything," says Mohan who like his fellow farmers is a regular participant at the Farmers Field School.
The Charkha Development Communication Network feels that smallholder farmers in Jharkhand have learnt innovative agriculture methods better in the schools run by the farmers themselves.
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