Pondicherry to Rajasthan- My journey with Agriculture and Farmers

Agriculture is and always been mine interest and lately becoming my passion too. Born and brought up in Pondicherry, I had volunteered in nearby villages on farming regularly, notably organic farms.

During farm work at Sristi Village in Pondicherry

Recently, I've taken a baby step in pursuing one of my interest, Sustainable Farming.

I, now work in a tribal belt of Rajasthan under Gandhi Fellowship. We mainly focus on improving the quality of public education by working in Government schools, primarily building capacities of teachers and headmasters.

Working far from the homeland, despite language and culture being alien here, I stepped forward to try hands my on agriculture here in Rajasthan, not on field work, but by providing knowledge support.

 A comprehensive discussion with a farmer contributed vastly to the development of this idea and design.

I met a farmer who has a high interest in reading. Reading habit among farmer is uncommon. Hence I thought why not take advantage of his reading interest and supply him with reading material from the internet which could solve daily agricultural challenges.

During field visit in a tribal village, Rajasthan.

The objective is to address the knowledge gap between local farmers and global sustainable agricultural practices and ideas. Hence I've agreed to act as a bridge between global information available on the Internet and the farmer residing in a remote tribal village in Sarada block of Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Hoping to connect global-locally, and to let them know What's-going-on-out-there.

Enumerating further, I look forward to create an amicable agricultural ecosystem and informed civil society in rural areas where farmers help each other in disseminating useful information. And thereby recording and building local insights on global information in sustainable farming practices.

So I'll be supplying them with printed reading materials every month.

Supplying reading material on Zero Budget Farming.

So what happens after supplying with the pool of information? As of now, we've planned to sit for two meeting in a month.

Meeting 1 - to supply reading materials on various global farming practices.

Meeting 2 - to ensure his understanding of the given material and to disseminate the same info to one fellow farmer on every second meeting. Thereby creating a multiplier impact on every meeting.

Challenge: to identify and sort information and practices which show promise of replicability as well as those which could be scaled or adapted minimastically.

(If you happen to see more challenge on the above proposal, please don’t hesitate to comment those challenges below)

The impact I see is to create 'Livelihood Ambassadors' who will act as a catalyst in disseminating information and best practices to fellow villagers on Sustainable Agricultural.

Although it is just a baby-step, it is a 'Step' taken to create a better to place to live.