5-Social Benefits

Transcript

Hello friends. This week we learnt about the various advantages of conservation agriculture like how we can increase system productivity and the economic advantages it has. We also looked at the environmental benefits of conservation agriculture. There is one more important aspect that we have to look at. Agriculture is a system with a family approach. This is even more true for developing countries like most of south Asian countries. As agriculture is family based both male and female members of the family work in the farm. These days’feminization of agriculture is a very talked about subject. Also, when we talk about Eastern Gangetic Plains then the migration rate is also very high. So, keeping these things in mind, today we will discuss the social benefits of adopting conservation agriculture.

First, if we adopt conservation agriculture then we can also do some alternate income generating activities. For example, we were in Katheli village and a women farmer by the name of Rekha had done CASI farming in half acre. Keeping in line with our goal of intensification, she also grew some vegetables in her Maize farm. She was able to earn 5000 to 6000 by selling these vegetables. After this, she also got maize crop from her farm. So in this way, if we adopt the principles and technologies of CASI, then we can also engage in alternate activities. This is especially true for women as most farmers are small cultivators and there is a lot of migration because of which women have to take care of the farm.

The second benefit conservation agriculture has is that it is a labour saving way of doing farming. If we do DSR, then we don’t have to do puddling and transplanting. Now mostly, I would say around 90% of the transplanting work is done by women. So it requires a lot of drudgery and we can avoid all this by adopting conservation agriculture. Women then can spend their time in other income generating activities. In Bihar, there are many self-help groups for women and these groups also work on women entrepreneurship. So if women are able to spare time from agriculture then they can spend that time on their family or on any other entrepreneurial activities.

This also works as an empowerment. When we started our work through a self-help group, then some women came forward and told us that they will adopt conservation agriculture. These ladies worked as our ambassador and told other women about it. So in this way, these ladies got recognition and also a source of some additional income. Such social benefits come out of conservation agriculture. Basically, male and female farmers who are able to save time from this can use that time in other activities.

The benefit that farmers derive from conservation agriculture, they can spend that in education and food. So their nutritional security also improves.

One of the principles of CASI is intensification and it brings diversification to our farm and this leads to more income generating activities.

One of the social benefits of conservation agriculture is that women do extremely laborious work like transplanting or weeding. They can save time from these and instead spend that time on other activities. Overall, there will be an improvement in the household activities.

We would also have to design machines that come under CASI to be gender specific. Like the machines are very heavy and it is very difficult to transport them from one place to another. So we have to work on how to make these machines accessible to women and how to make small machines so that women are able to operate it.

So friends besides other advantages of CASI, one benefit that we see coming out is the social benefit. If everyone works together then there will be scaling out of conservation agriculture and the business will increase and other people in the society will get employment. Service providers can buy more machines and expand their employment. So, conservation agriculture has a lot of advantages.