Projects
Community Food Sovereignty Project
The dongria kondh are an indigenous group living in the remote hills of the Niyamgiri range in the South of Orissa. For hundreds of years these people have lead peaceful and sustainable lives, cultivating the hillsides of this unique environment. Traditional crops such as millet and corn as well as root vegetables have provided generations with the nutrition required to sustain them and their physically demanding lives. During the summer months the forests are abundant with a variety of fruit, essential supplements to their primarily grain based diets.
Establishing an ecological farming model
We visited farmers of three districts in Orissa where Bt Cotton is illegaly cultivated to inform them about the risks of genetic engineering. The farmers placed a very pertinent question before us. Can you, they asked, give us an alternative to cultivation of genetically modified crops? This set us thinking. We had to prepare a demonstration model for giving teeth to our campaign against GMOs. For this purpose we have selected five villages under the Karlaguda Gram Panchayat in the Kalahandi district of Orissa. The small and marginal farmers of these villages are tribals. They have left their traditional food crops and agricultural practices coming under the influence of modern farming methods. They now grow cotton in their fields.
Our aim will be to train the villagers in sustainable agriculture concepts and help them return to food crops which they will cultivate using the concepts they have learnt. They will grow their own seeds, prepare their own compost and bio pesticides, store their grains, market their produce and make value additions. These villages will serve as models for others to replicate.
Community Managed Decentralised Food Distribution System
In the guise of “feeding the poor and hungry” a model of industrial agriculture was proposed by the Western world. In the year 1960 the Indian government succumbed to pressure and adopted it. What it meant essentially was to promote two cereals, rice and wheat, at the expense of other food crops like millets, cereals and pulses. The system of mono cropping emerged and to increase yield land devoted to other agricultural produce was shifted to the above two types of grains.
Read more: Community Managed Decentralised Food Distribution System
Community Charter on the Climate Crisis
Over the last few years, the term “climate change” has reverberated in our environment through media, scientific and public discourses, national and international seminars and scholarly articles. We have been bombarded with the images of melting glaciers, polar bears precariously balancing on thin ice slabs and projections of rising sea levels. Most of these discussions have left us, the common citizen, far behind.
Improving nutritional food security
We work with small and marginal farmers to improve the productivity of nutrition gardens. The overall goal is to reduce the food insecurity of the rural poor. Interventions are made based on the principles of sustainable natural resources management (NRM).
We have taken up such a work in six villages in two Gram Panchayats (GPs) of Bisoi block of Mayurbhanj district in Orissa for a period of one year in 2007.
