2018, April 21 & 22 | Awakin to Abundance - Capacity building program | @ Khalad, Pune

FROM Annadata.....citizens movement for safe food news n happenings....www.organicannadata.org

Awakin to Abundance -Capacity building program on Sustainable livelihood for existing and upcoming youth...

Dt. 21st n 22nd Apr. 2018  Sat. & Sun.

Reporting on 20th evening or 21st morning 9am. 

Will get over on 22nd Apr. 2018, Sun.even. 5.30pm

Venue -  Gram Gaurav Pratishtan

Pani Panchayat, Shetkari Prashikshan Kendra, Gotemal Road, Khalad, Taluka Purandar, Pune 412 30.

Visit the website for more details of the venue http://Panipanchayat.org

One day or one session is also allowed to attend. 

For serious participants preparation support will be done thr coordinators. For understanding strengths and to choose opportunities. 

Facilitators are Arun Wakhlu CEO Pragati Leadership, Shitole Kaka Activist n Trustee of Gram Gaurav Pratishtan, Sadanand Pendse : Activist for Gramoday, in Dapoli, Dr. Sonali Shinde: Ayurvedic n Panchakarma expert

Ref. Www.organicannadata.org

Kindly RSVP or inform Samadhi 9921008078

WORKSHOP ON RAINWATER HARVESTING & SOIL CONSERVATION

at Vanvadi on April 14-15, by Vasantbhau Futane and Bharat Mansata.

The workshop will address the severe twin problems of water scarcity (with plunging groundwater levels), and massive soil erosion and degradation, both arising from poor land care and destruction of nature. Even high rainfall regions like the Konkan Western Ghats now face severe water shortage, as community open wells dry up earlier each year, especially in upland adivasi villages.

The workshop will be bilingual, in Marathi and English, for the benefit of villager-farmers, and interested urban folk. Vasantbhau and Bharat will provide an overall introduction to rainwater harvesting and soil conservation. Vasantbhau will also provide practical training on how to mark out contour lines and make contour bunds/trenches, as suitable. About 2 hours of discussion will focus on specific local problems and needs.

The workshop will start at 10 am on Saturday, April 14, and end by 4 pm on Sunday, April 15. The outdoor practical sessions, which will explain theory too, will be from 4 pm to 6.30 pm on Saturday, and 8 am to 10.30 am on Sunday. The rest of the workshop will be indoors, in the shade.

Those desiring more hands-on practice in marking contour lines and making contour bunds/trenches – on Sunday evening and Monday morning – are welcome to stay over at Vanvadi till Monday noon. (Participants are requested to bring light clothing, bed-sheet, and a torch. Something to protect your head from the sun would also be helpful.)

A voluntary contribution of Rs 2,400 per urban participant is requested to cover all costs of training, food, and shared (dormitory-style) accommodation. For local villagers/farmers, the workshop will be free. 

To register, please email bharatmansata@yahoo.com, with a copy to Vasantbhai at sapress.marathi@gmail.com. You would then be requested to deposit advance payment to confirm your registration.

2018 16-20 March @Mumbai - Organic Festival by GoI

https://www.facebook.com/Women-of-India-Festival-Mumbai-2018-Organic-Products-170237486643358/

Santosh Kaur of Kheti Virasat Mission, Punjab; We are selling Sweet lemon pickle, ginger garlic paste, turmeric pickle, vaadia, kasoori methi, roasted alsi and moongphali, carrot pickle, green peas pickle sattu, amla chutney, seeds, orange peel powder, methi powder. Visit our Stall No. 47

Varsha and Anant Bhoyar of Gavkus, Maharashtra; ‘We have been invited to Mumbai for an exhibition "Women of India". Mumbai friends please encourage the growers and consumers by visiting exhibition. Our stall no. is 12’

Women Farmers Collective from Gujarat; ‘Visit and buy from us at Stall No. 13, 45, 65, 66.’

2018 6-8 April BEEJOTSAV-BIODIVERSITY @ NAGPUR

Dear friends,

We are happy to invite you to our 6^th year of BEEJOTSAV-BIODIVERSITY at Nagpur from 6^th to 8^th April 2018, a carnival of organic food, foodgrains, spices and the celebration of the sustainable, eco-friendly life style, visibility to seed saver and pastoral communities.

We, at BEEJOTSAV, are a varied group of organic farmers, seed savers, urban farmers and consumers who have been showcasing organic food for last 5 years.. We try to link grass roots farmers and the urban consumer.

We believe that safe, chemical-free food and healthy Biodiversity is the right of every citizen and our movement is a step towards making it available to the consumer.

We invite you to attend it and you can even exhibit your products by taking a stall. 

Festival date: 6^th, 7^th & 8^th April 2018

Time: 10 am to 10 pm

Venue: Mure Memorial Lawns, Amravati Road, Near Variety Square, Nagpur.

Stall size: 8’ X 8’

Stall charges: Rs 2,500/- (for 3 days, doesn’t include food and accommodation charges)

To book your stall(s) please fill up the form here:- https://goo.gl/forms/S5OuIXIbWXHyKHkn1

To register yourself please fill up the form here :- https://goo.gl/forms/khGSyomWRPoq7YZR2

For Stalls:- After filling up the form, please wait for confirmation from our team. After confirmation please go ahead with payment, you can take the account details from any of the following coordinator.

Beejotsav Coordinators:-

Akash Naoghare 9766912745 anaoghare@gmail.com

Sajal Kulkarni  9881479239  sajalskulkarni@gmail.com 

Ashwini Aurangabadkar 9890515814 ashwini.aurangabadkar@gmail.com

ARTICLE : Sowing hope: How some women have given organic farming a fillip by collecting seeds of long-forgotten vegetable varieties

Maneka Gandhi Mar 05, 2018 17:32:18 IST

Organic farming for me is as important as animal welfare. Both save thousands of species and make the world a better place for humans. When I became Minister for Women and Children, the ministry started a new project of holding an annual Mela in Delhi Haat, for 15 days, in which 300 women organic farmers are called from all over India to sell their produce. This year,  products worth Rs 2 crore worth were sold and the ministry sent 50 women to a huge organic mela in Ahmedabad organised by Srishthi and now we are preparing for one in Mumbai in February.

I also make sure that one or more women organic farmers, or groups, get the highest award for women in India, the Nari Shakti award. In 2016, the best exhibition I went to was one of wandering pastoral tribes in India and the NGOs that conserve their cultural forms, camels and their milk. The best exhibition I went to this year was a huge organic one in Noida which had more than 700 companies, institutions, NGOs and individuals taking part. It was organised by OFAI which is headquartered in Goa and headed by Dr Claude Alvares. I bought a beautiful pair of earrings for my sister made of red ratti (used to weigh gold at one point) and white Vaijayanti seeds made by a farmer’s wife.

Representational image. Reuters

The Sikkim pavilion was the most impressive and the chief minister of Sikkim should get a Bharat Ratna for the work he has done to make the whole state organic. There were hundreds of varieties of rice, including one that you don’t have to boil, just simply pour hot water on. I saw vegetables that I have never seen before: huge long, white, aubergines (baingan), every variety of kaddu, cucumber and chilli. I saw red potatoes and at least 50 varieties of rajma ranging from white to purple. When I ate the lunch thali of village vegetables, I thought I’d died and gone to Food Heaven!

I would like you to know these women who have changed thousands of lives by simply collecting old seeds of long-forgotten vegetable varieties.

The Vanastree Malnad Garden and Seed Savers Collective in Sirsi, Karnataka is run by women. They have documented 120 varieties of vegetables, from the tiny sparrow ladies fingers (bhindi) to old varieties of sugarcane. All these are heritage seeds. You can get in touch with them at sunitasirsi@gmail.com.

Annadana is a Karnataka NGO started by Sangita Sharma. For the last few years, it has been practising and teaching sustainable farm practices and conserving over 200 old vegetable seeds. Sharma had realised that seed corporations and agricultural institutes were blasting seeds with toxins, chemicals and pesticides, contaminating all the food so she decided to start collecting, growing and distributing seeds to farmers. So far, she has distributed 3 lakh free seed packets to marginal farmers and is selling them at a low cost to garden enthusiasts. She has a training programme, called Seed to Seed, on soil health management. Sharma's core group now comprises 18 farmers who teach and they can be contacted at info@annadana-india.org

Niranjana Maru is from Wardha and has formed an NGO called Chetana Vikas. They have a demonstration farm of trees, grasses, tubers and fodder and concentrate on wasteland regeneration through teaching a mixed cropping system to local farmers. You can write to her at chetanavikaswda@gmail.com

Sabarmati Tiki is the daughter of Prof Radhamohan who bought degraded land in Nayagarh and, despite people calling his mission impossible, decided to regenerate it. He named the farm “sambhav” or “possible”. Sabarmati and her team grow 314 traditional rice varieties at the farm and distribute the seeds to farmers in Odisha. She can be contacted at sabarmati@gmail.com

Pebble Garden is a land regeneration project started by Deepika Kundaji on seven acres of laterite soil which was severely eroded with no topsoil. She and her partner set out to bring the old forest back, created water bodies, built up the soil by putting organic mulch and neighbourhood kitchen waste. Today, the land grows 80 varieties of vegetables, herbs and medicinal plants, many of which are endangered and never seen in markets. The seeds of these plants are shared with other farmers and seed savers. Contact her at pebblegardenforest@gmail.com

Mohinee Bhiste comes from Raigarh, Nainital and is part of a network of women farmers called Jan Prerna Sangathan. In 2009, she and her friends started exploring traditional seeds. They have made a bank of seeds of local wheat, millet, maize, barley and vegetables, where farmers can take freely provided they return double the quantity after the harvest. You can contact them at 09568254945.

And who can forget the contribution of Dr Vandana Shiva, who has been writing and working for non-violent farming and biodiversity since 1984? She has been actively involved in conserving 5,000 crop varieties, among them 3,000 kinds of rice, 150 kinds of wheat, 150 kinds of rajma and the rest vegetables and pulses. They have their own seed bank of 45 acres in Sherpur, Uttarakhand. I buy a lot of my monthly rations from Navdanya. You can contact her at dehradun@navdanya.net

This year for Diwali, I didn’t give useless mithai/statues / Ganeshes / dates or badams as gifts. I filled baskets of organic grains, pulses, jams, pickles, brought from small organic farmers from all over India, and gave these. Needless to say, each recipient was more than happy. After all, each one of us likes to eat well and the taste of organic wild rice, for instance, is incredible! We also like to feel safe, that our food is not giving us cancer. And we can only do that if we go forward to insisting on nonchemical, non-poisonous food. If you know any farmers, try to make them switch. As starter gifts, you can buy seeds from these women and give them to farmers.

Two Hindi proverbs say: kathiya gehu kargi dhan, jo bove vah chatur kisan. Farmers who grow Kathiya wheat and Kargi rice (both organic old varieties) are clever (because both can grow in dry and rainfed conditions. Kodau kare bhale mein chote, chote bade bhartev pet: Kodo, a millet, may be small in size but it feeds everyone from children to the elderly under adverse conditions.

Shamika Mone has written a source book on India’s organic seeds. You should definitely buy it from OFAI, Mapusa, goamyofai@gmail.com

To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in, www.peopleforanimalsindia.org

Published Date: Mar 05, 2018 17:29 PM | Updated Date: Mar 05, 2018 17:32 PM

SOURCE : https://www.firstpost.com/india/sowing-hope-how-some-women-have-given-organic-farming-a-fillip-by-collecting-seeds-of-long-forgotten-vegetable-varieties-4377263.html

This Seed Keeper Preserves Over 500 Rare Varieties. Here’s How You Can Become One Too!

In a world where the hybrid seed has become a norm, it is important for seed keepers to continue to ensure that varieties of indigenous plants and vegetables are available for posterity!

by Prabhakar RaoJanuary 31, 2018, 5:31 pm

In today’s world, if one had to make a shopping list for buying vegetables, you would say –

Beans – half a kilo
Cucumber – half a kilo
Carrots – one kilo
Capsicum – quarter kilo and so on.

This is because there usually is just one variety of any vegetable available in the market. It is indeed an exception to find, say, three colours of capsicum or two kinds of beans.

But if you went to the market 100 years ago, you might have seen hundreds of varieties of cabbage, peas, tomatoes, pumpkins and sweet-corn to choose from!

Brown and Violet Peppers

The July edition of 2011, National Geographic magazine carried this info-graphic that succinctly captures the gravity of the situation.

In 1983 the Rural Advancement Foundation International conducted a study on the kind of biodiversity that existed in 1903. What you can see from the slide is, that in just 80 years, we had lost 93% of all the vegetable varieties that existed.

That was in 1983. If we did the same study today, we would find that we have lost 99% of the biodiversity amongst vegetables.

For thousands of years, dedicated farmers and seed keepers created and preserved tens of thousands of varieties of vegetables. In just 100 years we have lost nearly all of them.

What has changed in the past 100 years? Till just a century ago, passionate farmers selected the best plants in the fields to create seed for the next season. There was never a business model in the multiplication of seeds. If the Seed Keeper shared just a seed with a farmer, that farmer could make any number of seeds from it, and grow the same vegetable season after season. In effect, every farmer was a Seed Keeper who preserved seeds for posterity.

Somewhere after the Green Revolution of the 60s, it was felt seed production could be a profitable business model. But to sustain this business model, it required farmers return to the seed company every season to buy new seed.

Selling indigenous seed that belonged to the Seed Keepers could never be a sustainable business model because farmers could buy it once and then multiply it themselves at the end of the season.

Pink Corn

To ensure that a sustainable business model was established in the seed industry, companies started to make seeds from which the farmer could not make seed for the next season. That started the era of the hybrid and GMO seeds. Today almost all the seeds sold by seed companies to vegetable farmers are hybrid or GMO.

In the past 50 years, farmers have lost the tradition of saving seeds almost completely. It is the norm today for farmers to buy seed every season for growing vegetables.

I remember the late 70s when I was completing my doctoral studies in agriculture. I belonged to the lineage of Dr M.S. Swaminathan and Dr Norman Borloug, who created the Green Revolution. It was my generation of agricultural scientists who promoted industrial agriculture. We were the ones who persuaded farmers to adopt chemical farming. We were the ones who told farmers do put urea and D.A.P.

We were the ones who told farmers to use hybrid seeds. We needed to create national food security and to give due credit I do believe that our generation of scientists achieved that.

Dr. Rao explaining seed varieties

But somewhere deep inside there was a small voice within me that kept asking me if we were doing the right thing. That small voice kept asking me if this was a sustainable model for agriculture even after I left the field to pursue a career in landscape architecture.

During the course of my career, I had many opportunities to travel to the remotest parts of the planet. One of the things that I particularly enjoyed doing on these trips, was to spend time with the older generation of farmers. I used to discuss with them about the kind of vegetables they grew during their times, and how times have changed.

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You may also like: 5 Farmers Who Prove Smart Agriculture Can Make You Rich

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Surprisingly, many of these farmers actually retained a few seeds of the ancient indigenous native vegetable varieties with them. Understanding my passion to preserve these ancient varieties, they shared with me a few of their seeds.

And so, for 25 years, I collected indigenous seeds from many parts of India and far-flung corners of the Earth. As a part of the Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit organization based in the US, I shared these seeds with many other Seed Keepers across the world.

When I returned to India in 2011, I decided to become a full-time Seed Keeper. I collected nearly 540 varieties of indigenous native vegetable seeds that were on the brink of extinction.

Participants harvesting exotic vegetables and fruits

At Hariyalee Seeds farms, just on the outskirts of Bengaluru, I started testing these varieties for genetic stability and environmental suitability.

At Hariyalee Seeds, you will find, 19 varieties of 23 tomatoes, 24 varieties of capsicum and chillies, six varieties of brinjals, five types of Okras, 11 varieties of Basils, 15 varieties of edible lettuces and mustards and many more wonderful vegetables that you and I need to protect for posterity.

Over the past six years, I managed to successfully multiply about 142 varieties of indigenous vegetables that anyone can grow in India.

Over the past two years, all these vegetable varieties have been made available to friends, farmers, and urban gardeners. Hundreds of people have enjoyed the experience of growing these vegetables with their own hands. Many farmers have used these exotic indigenous vegetables to generate a high-income revenue stream.

In fact, there was one farmer who grew a variety of cherry tomato with multiple colour variations that looked like candy. He was able to sell this variety at Rs.300 per kilo.

In a world where a farmer is happy to get Rs.20 per kilo for tomato in the best of times, selling tomatoes at Rs.300 a kilo sounds like a dream too good to be true.

Another advantage of growing indigenous vegetable seeds is that they are incredibly hardy and easy to grow. This is because native vegetable seeds have been selected by nature over thousands of years and had learnt to survive under the harshest of conditions.

While growing these exotic indigenous seeds can be an enjoyable pastime for home gardeners, they are at the same time making an extraordinary contribution to the genetic biodiversity of vegetables on this planet.

It doesn’t matter if the vegetable is growing in a pot on your balcony, in your kitchen garden, or in a farmers’ field in some remote part of India. The fact is that we are giving a chance for that vegetable variety to remain with us for posterity.

We are in effect, becoming modern-day Seed Keepers.

I am sure that in each one of you, at this very moment, there is this desire, to be a part of this movement to preserve these ancient indigenous seeds for posterity. Let’s all join hands to revive the Golden Age of The Seed Keepers!

NEWS: 5 Farmers Who Prove Smart Agriculture Can Make You Rich

5 Farmers Who Prove Smart Agriculture Can Make You Rich

Farming too can be quite rewarding – both mentally and financially.

by Manabi KatochDecember 22, 2017, 6:40 pm

Drought! Loans! Untimely rains! Low market prices! It often seems like farmers have endless suffering in their lives.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why none of us wants our kids to become a farmer. Instead, we all want them to immerse themselves in law or medical books so they can make their careers a big success.

But are these career options the only way to be successful? Definitely not. This Kisan Diwas, let’s see why even farming too can be quite rewarding – both mentally and financially. Here are five people in India who prove this to be true:

1. Pramod Gautam:

Meet Pramod, a former automobile engineer who switched to farming in 2006, and now gets a yearly turnover of a crore, after implementing a radically different method of cultivation.

In 2006, after feeling unsatisfied in his job as an automobile engineer, Pramod abandoned engineering and decided to give farming an earnest shot on his 26-acre ancestral land.

Initially, Pramod faced his share of challenges. He planted white groundnuts and turmeric but reaped no benefits.

Availability of labour was another big issue as workers preferred to migrate to cities and work in factories. Pramod decided to switch to other crops and modern farm equipment, which were not so labour intensive. An example of such types of equipment used by some Indian farmers is the driverless tractor technology – developed by Mahindra for such situations.

Incidentally, farmers like Pramod can make such choices now since, unlike before, they do not have to buy all the equipment. Even with a low budget, they can rent farm equipment using apps like Trringo.

In 2007-08, Pramod switched wholly to horticulture. He planted oranges, guavas, lemons, sweet limes, raw bananas and Toor Dal. Pramod also decided to start his own mill.

Pramod sells the processed and unpolished pulses under the brand name of ‘Vandana’.  He has an annual turnover of about Rs. 1 crore from his dal mill and an additional Rs 10-12 lakh from horticulture, which is much more than what he was earning as an engineer!

2. Sachin Kale:

Like Pramod, Sachin is a mechanical engineer from Nagpur who started his career by working at a power plant and rapidly rose to the top over the years. In 2013, Sachin left his luxurious life in Gurgaon, where he was working as a manager for Punj Lloyd and getting a hefty salary of Rs 24 lakh per annum. He shifted to Medhpar to become a farmer.

Talking about challenges, Sachin says: “Everything was a challenge, as I had absolutely no clue about farming. I had to learn everything from tilling the land to sowing the seeds.”

Sachin invested his 15-year-old provident fund in setting up a clean energy model where his farm was useful all year round and gave a maximum of profit.

In 2014, Sachin launched his own company, Innovative AgriLife Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which helped farmers with the contract farming model of farming. Today, Sachin’s company is helping 137 happy farmers working on 200 acres of land and drawing a turnover of approximately Rs 2 crore.

3. Harish Dhandev:

Another engineer, Harish left his government job to take up Aloe Vera farming in Rajasthan – which proved highly successful, earning him crores.

Once he decided to farm on his ancestral land in Jaisalmer, one of the first things that Harish did was to get his soil tested by the agricultural department.

“The agriculture department suggested I grow crops like Bajra, Moong or Gawar – crops that require less water. They did not suggest growing Aloe Vera, in spite of the fact that we were already cultivating it, because of a lack of market opportunities for the crop in the Jaisalmer area,” says Harish

However, Harish did his own research online through resources like MyAgriGuru, which connects farmers with agri-experts across the country to allow an exchange of ideas. Harish discovered that if he set his sight further afield and used online portals to get to national and international markets, he could easily sell his produce well.

Harish’s initial 80,000 saplings quickly grew in number to seven lakh. Within six months Harish managed to get ten clients for his Aloe Vera within Rajasthan itself. But soon discovered that they, in turn, were selling the extracted pulp at much higher prices. So he trained his farm labourers to extract the pulp, giving them all some extra income.

Over the years, Harish has bought more land and now grows Aloe Vera over a hundred acres. His company, Dhandev Global Group, is located in Dhaisar, 45 kilometres from Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and his turnover ranges between Rs. 1.5 to 2 crore.

Through the above three stories, you may believe that only educated farmers can be successful. But that is hardly the case.

4. Vishwanath Bobade:

A farmer from Bahirwadi, Vishwanath’s village is in the drought-prone Beed district of Maharashtra. However, he has earned Rs 7 lakh from farming on just one acre of land!

Vishwanath decided to give multi-cropping a try, and he also figured out that he could increase his crop by building a wire fence and planting creepers and climbers on them.

Vishwanath also installed a pipeline with his first-year profits to ensure sprinklers watered his plants. He has also picked up farming methods like raised-bed farming and mulching over the years, which has proved to be beneficial.

Indeed, Vishwanath takes help of only two labourers at his farm. He and his wife work day and night to take care of the plants and hence the cost of production is less, giving them better profits.

5. Rajiv Bittu:

Rajiv is a part-time Chartered Accountant and a full-time farmer. And according to him, he earns more from farming than his chartered accountancy firm!

After his three-year-old daughter refused to mingle with farmers during one of his visits to his ancestral village, Rajiv decided to take up farming to change her views. His first step was to lease some land in Kuchu village, 32 km away from Ranchi.

As he did not have the funds to pay rent for the land, he offered the landlord 1/3rd of the produce he grew. And thus his journey into agriculture began. He made use of the latest technology, like drip irrigation and mulching, to get a maximum yield at his farm.

“Drip irrigation is the best way to reduce water wastage and labour cost, while mulching is nothing but a thin layer of plastic in which holes are made to put the seeds. This restores the sun rays for a long time and retains humidity of the soil. It also restricts the growth of weeds around the main crop,” Rajeev tells us from his farm.

Halfway into 2014, Rajeev had a good harvest of watermelon and muskmelon. But the profit did not do justice to the investment.

He then divided the land into small segments and calculated the investment made, labour cost, and the profit gained from each part. This gave him a clear idea of the economics of the farm. Rajeev planted different crops in each segment to calculate the exact ‘investment versus profit’ ratio of each harvest. This helped him to decide what crops should be planted next.

Rajeev has now taken 32 acres of farm on lease and is growing brinjal, cucumber, watermelon, muskmelon and tomato and earns a profit of around Rs 15 to 16 lakh every year.

This article is powered by Mahindra. Mahindra Samriddhi, a Mahindra group company, is working with the vision of driving inclusive growth to help farmers in India succeed. The company is working towards providing customised innovative farming solutions which significantly impact the productivity, prosperity and lives of two million farmers by the year 2020 through a widespread self-sustained Samriddhi network. Other projects by Mahindra include Project Prerna – which promotes gender-neutral farm tools and equipment along with making finances and farm knowledge more accessible for efficient and productive farming, and the Mahindra Samriddhi India Agri Awards to recognise and celebrate the often unsung heroes who have made purposeful contributions that made a difference in the field of Indian agriculture.

SOURCE : https://www.thebetterindia.com/125477/kisan-diwas-successful-farmers-lucrative-business/