As part Hon’ble PM’s vision of doubling farmer income, an initiative was undertaken whereby benefits under the National Mission on Micro Irrigation, per drop more crop, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), National Horticulture Mission, PM KUSUM were combined to ensure increase in income of farmers. One of the primary objective of the work was to ensure farmers are more independent. They can become self-reliant in terms of their own produce. It was a stated objective of the scheme that farmers could benefit from the government schemes to increase their incomes.
In each of these programmes, farmers who were pro technology were identified and sustained focus was placed on them to use all these yojanas to increase their agricultural output. The strategy was put up before Gram Sabha and was finalised in its consultation. Other stakeholders such as the Agriculture Department, Horticulture Department, and NGOs working in the field of agriculture were consulted to guide on technical aspects of the programme. Elected representatives were involved in site selection and using local methodology to solve issues. The programme also included farmers training in Krishi Vigyan Kendra.
Furthermore, farmer groups like Kisan Sangh were involved, ensuring that all stakeholders converged to maximise benefits under government schemes.
Farming is risky because of high input costs, low returns, market linkage issues, and climate change variability. Realising this, it was decided to have a convergent approach and efforts were made to make water available to farmers through farm ponds for agriculture and reliable electricity via solar pumps. Further, Benefits under the National Mission on Micro Irrigation, per drop more crop, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), National Horticulture Mission, and PMKUSUM were combined to ensure an increase in income of farmers. Farmers were provided with farm implements under RKVY, farm ponds, and plastic mulching under the National Horticulture Mission as well as good quality horticultural crop seeds and drip and sprinkler irrigation systems along with solar pumps under PMKUSUM.
A Participative and Collaborative Approach
The key strategies of the initiative include its participative and collaborative approach; growing crops like cucumber, and tomato were local crops suited for the area thus ensuring crop effectiveness; replicability as all these schemes such as NHM, RKVY, PMKUSUM, and NMMI are being implemented by government everywhere; the scalability of the initiative as farmers were able to get higher incomes and were able to practice more scientific farming to reduce water and electricity issues.
The Agriculture Department and Horticulture Department were the nodal departments and farmers were the primary stakeholders. Through collaborative exercise, farmers were motivated around the concept of more crops per drop and doubling income. District officers were made in charge of a few panchayats and hence they were given routine tasks of going to these panchayats and motivating farmers. NGOs were involved by asking them to mobilise the farmers The best NGOs were encouraged and awarded at the district level for their work. Media was also involved and massive IEC campaigns were organised in the area. Regular visits of the experts in the area were ensured.
The first key differentiator of the initiative was the sustainability of the initiative which was ensured by finding local and pro-environment solutions. Farm ponds like water harvesting structures have ensured all-round water availability for farming. Another differentiator was that the process was made transparent and farmers were selected after stakeholder consultations. In all these works, MGNREGA was dovetailed to ensure the availability of work at the local level and ensure accountability. The farm techniques such as drip and sprinkler, mulching, and solar pumps are easy to implement across the terrain of Rajasthan and hence it is a replicable model, which is another key point
As part of this initiative, the district administration reached out to more than 60,000 farmer families, resulting in the sanctioning of 1,237 new KCC applications. A total of 271 applications for farm implements have been prepared under various schemes. Additionally, 113 new applications for farm ponds, 379 new applications for farm pipelines, and 349 new applications for fencing have been sanctioned. Furthermore, 68 new solar pumps have been approved under PMKUSUM.
This integrated model of convergence has helped farmers to increase their incomes as they have not only constructed farm ponds to save water and use it, but they are also using solar pumps to reduce electricity issues as well as to pump water. This has been further supplemented by the use of drip and plastic mulching to reduce water losses and ensure more crop per drop. Good quality horticultural crops are being practiced in protected cultivation leading to continuous increase in income levels of farmers and increasing the number of crops being produced per year. This has led to a higher focus on high-quality inputs and hence has ensued a virtuous cycle. Such an initiative has allowed a sustained focus on doubling farmers’ incomes.
