JUST LIKE any other entrepreneur, all a farmer needs is an assured market and a better deal. Akash Badave realised this as soon as he started working with tribal communities of Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district a decade ago. As a Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellow, he was assigned to help the district administration improve the livelihoods of marginal communities.
Dantewada is in the spotlight for high level of malnutrition; for instance, as per the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (2019-21), some 76 per cent of women aged 15-49 years in the district are anaemic. The national average for the same group is 57 per cent. Previous attempts to improve nutritional status of people in the district, by enhancing agricultural production through chemical fertilisers and pesticides, had few takers. "The chemicals killed all our earthworms and made our soil lifeless," says Rameshwar Yadav, a farmer in the district's Balud village. In 2012, the district administration decided to motivate farmers to turn to organic farming and to grow crops other than traditional paddy and millet varieties. But the exercise, says Badave, in-charge of the sensitisation programme, highlighted farmers' reluctance to grow more or new crops.
Even if individual farmers grew surplus, there was a lack of market linkages for their harvest. The district, covered with dense forests and mineral-rich hills, has limited connectivity. Though the government procures certain crops at minimum support price (MSP), it benefits few. There is only one mandi for procurement of produce, which is out of reach for many. There is no system to procure organic produce.
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