Deoghar (Jharkhand), Mar. 25 (ANI): Outside the Common Facility Centre, a building constructed by farmers for their common use in Jhanjhi village in Jharkhand, farmers from six-neighbouring villages have lined up since morning to borrow the Madua Seeds (also known as finger millet). Ignored for long, the Madua has recently attracted the attention of the farmers of the region who are willing to return twice the amount of seed borrowed from the seed bank of Jhanjhi residents at the end of the harvest season.
Till two decades ago, Madua was an essential part of the diet of tribals in the entire Deoghar district, of which Jhanjhi is one village. In the past two decades, Madua had all but disappeared from the region. Farmers who earlier planted Madua in their fields had switched to paddy farming with the introduction of high yielding variety of seeds and improvement in irrigation facilities during the famed Green Revolution.
"I remember my grandmother would make several dishes from Madua as it was considered good for health but with paddy gaining ground as a widespread trend, people started considering Madua a symbol of backwardness," says Siromani Singh, a resident of Jhanjhi.
After the initial years of profits, paddy soon became an expensive affair for the farmers. Lack of irrigation facilities, frequent droughts, the requirement of expensive fertilisers and pesticides has made paddy cultivation unprofitable for many smallholder farmers in the region. Moreover, the excessive consumption of ground water in paddy cultivation has led to a decrease in the water table in the area, a sure recipe for disaster.
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The residents of Jhanjhi were among the earliest to recognise the extraordinary qualities of Madua which was valued by their ancestors. This wisdom has revived the hopes of the farmers. Besides its high nutritional value, Madua requires little rainfall to grow and flourishes even in wastelands, so the drought-stricken area needs no external irrigation. The use of fertilizers and pesticides also reduces drastically as compared to any high yielding crop, bringing down the cost of cultivation.
The farmers in Jhanjhi village were supported by Pravah, a Deoghar-based non-profit, with help from German development agency WeltHungerHilfe, who encouraged them to go back to their traditional crops. The two non-profits provided the initial support to farmers to work in the fallow uplands in the region and cultivate Madua as part of their Sustainable Integrated Farming System (SIFS) program. Under SIFS, the organisation has been supporting smallholder farmers to take up innovative methods of farming to increase agriculture inputs with minimum inputs.
With the reintroduction of the crop, farmers have shown positive response and cultivation of Madua has been scaled up in several villages in Deoghar through government initiatives. In 2012, 45 farmers in three villages of Jarwadih, Jhanji and Kalyanrathari cultivated 1.78 acre land to produce nine quintals of the crop. And as per the latest statistics, 550 farmers are cultivating Madua across 32 villages, producing a total of 48 quintal of millet. The Charkha Development Communication Network feels that the land that struggled with poor productivity in the cultivation of paddy is now thriving, helping farmers cultivate Madua profitably.
"Although only a few farmers have shown their faith in Madua, many still continue to plant paddy. Initiatives to motivate them to return to their old millet crop are being taken with the help of farmer cooperatives, farmer clubs and the Agriculture University, as the crop continues to show promising results in Deoghar," says Babita Sinha of Pravah.
"What we had initially considered useless has now become the most important part of the meal. We now understand the value of our traditional crop. Madua has revived the hopes of many farmers in our district who had given up on farming," says Siromani, a smile lightening up her weather-lined face.
The Smallholder farmers of Jharkhand, who have revived their traditional crop, have a lesson for many others who are fighting the blues of the green revolution.
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