Variety of vegetable seeds per plot (Click to enlarge)

Despite being landless daily wage workers, some families have space adjacent to their huts to have kitchen gardens.  These have not been taken up so far by the village people. We have tried to motivate people to follow the guidelines of "Bio Intensive Gardening" and dig deep and grow vegetables.  5 families in 3 villages decided to try.  It involves work to water these saplings, do natural fencing and protect them from hens.  So despite our offering seeds not many came up.  With success of the 5 initiatives more families came forward this monsoon to maintain kitchen gardens.  We now have 35 BIG plots and when they yield it is big news in these villages.  As a way to recover our seed cost we are collecting  part of the yield back to give to other poor families where there is mal nourishment.  This is working well and in an informal manner where sometimes we directly link the families to each other.

Our vermicompost (earth worm induced composting) efforts have caught the notice of the mandal office.  The government has now got a program where by it is promoting vermi-composting as well and it is taking earth worms from families who we have initiated into vermi-composting.  This has thus become an income generating activity.  However the earthworms take time to multiply and we have been counseling farmers not to sell them too fast.   Our own vermi-program provides Rs 500 for the bricks and cement needed to make a pit and earthworms that act as the initial seed.

The village person has to return the value to us either in the form of vermin-compost or earthworms (after they multiply) or both. After that s/he is independent to make deals with the government or with other village people in promoting the fertilizer.  We use the vermicompost in the organic farm, BIG plots and recycle the earthworms to more pits.Since the demand is more than supply currently for vermicomposting in these villages we are planning to expand the program next year.  The government nursery has also purchased vermin-compost from the farmers, but mostly they use it to fertlize their own fields.

The 1 acre farm in Tholapi that Sutya's family has given to AID-India for use is organic now for the third year.  The electricity lines have now been approved for installing a pump and more activity should start after that.