Last year, Green And Grains started working with this tribal women farmer cluster at Kesla in MP…I belong to the same block but we didn’t solely choose it for that…we chose it because this zone is rainfed otherwise and hence the land is less abused…2nd, since the farmers are small and marginal and their earnings are really low, they work on their farms themselves and that helps in organic farming.

Since it’s a tribal dominated block and has many indices below average, many govt depts and social organizations are working here and these women keep hearing from them. It drops their sensitivity towards anything new…We suffered from it initially but got lucky after sometime when few women realized the potential this thought process brings.

Last kharif, at this cluster, we started with just 70+ farmers for vegetables. They started with 0.25 – 0.50 acres each in the 1st season. The energies were high, the teamwork paid off. While they were earning anything between 5 – 15K/acre/annum, now earn close to 70 – 120k and should touch 150k/acre this year.

This is not stopping here, its actually just the beginning…Local govt depts like Zila/Janpad panchayat, NRLM, Horticulture etc have made their resources available to the farmers and us and the multiplier effect of this convergence has started working. Refer to the news article for more…I’ll also write about it separately a little later.

The model/work is recognized as a successful model in the state conference of the Zila Panchayat CEOs, chaired by the Chief Minister Mr. Mohan Yadav, Minister for Panchayat and Grameen Vikas Mr. Prahlad Patel and Mister for Agriculture and Farmer Welfare Mr. Aidal Singh Kansana.