SAM Project Has Changed The Life Of Farmers Of Sunderban In Post Aila Condition

Fertile minds. Thinking Soil.
When Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us, make us stronger”, explained that what he meant is it for the ubermensch: the supermen, the Homo superiors if you may. Flying over a metropolis, climbing out of a cave or surviving a nuclear lab experiment. The last place you would expect to see them, would be tilling paddy fields of the Sunderbans.

What happened
The cyclone Aila hit the coastal regions of southwest, Bangladesh and the Sunderban region in India in 2009 starting brewing on the 23rd of May and after it dissipated by the 26th, it had left behind a trail of massive devastation. Not only did it wash away an entire ecosystem, but also left farmers homeless and washed in saline water into the land to damage fertility of whatever little remained. More than 100000 acres of cultivable land was laden with saline water from the Bay of Bengal. The farmers approached the government soil research institute with samples of soil, to help preserve the only way of livelihood for the people in the region. They declared that the soil would remain uncultivable for a minimum of four years.

Picking up the pieces – birth of SAM
MUKTI took up causes and was confident that they could turn this around. Thus were laid the first steps towards an agricultural revolution- Project SAM (Sustainable Agricultural Movement). MUKTI reached out to Prof Revati Swaminathan, a land reclamation expert from TOFM (Tamil Nadu Organic Farmers’ Movement) and AID (Association of Indian Development). She immediately came on board and after examining the region, was confident that the soil could still be utilized. She assured the farmers that there were in fact some indigenous rice varieties could easily be grown on saline soil like ‘Dudhershor’, ‘Talmugur’, ‘Kalomato’ and ‘Patnai’. Infused with anew ray of hope, the farmers of Sundarban communities started a pilot project comprising 150 farmers on July 2009. By the end of November, not merely was the land reclaimed, but production was much better than conventional farming techniques being employed earlier. Farmers embraced the huge success of the initiative with their fervid efforts and the number of farmers increased from 150 to 250 as MUKTI encouraged their vigor by providing them seeds and inputs for the same.

Shifting Gears
The movement gained pace in 2010 when MUKTI started encouraging farmers towards organic farming like vermicomposting and cow dung in lieu of chemical fertilizers. MUKTI conducted training for farmers in two Gram Panchayats at Nagendrapur and Kankandighi on the same and they could train up other farmers for technology dissemination and thus they could reach out to about 450 farmers in the process. What started off as partial organic and partial chemical fertilizer farming in the beginning, graduated to full-fledged organic farming with increasing faith of the farmers towards the system. A very important and innovative aspect in the organic farming was the introduction of the ‘Dhoinche seeds (Bengali name)” Sesbania cannabina . “Dhoinche” is particularly a legume plant broadcasted as the green manure for increasing soil fertility by trapping Nitrogen to soil from Nitrosomonus/ Nitrogenous bacteria from the nodules in the roots. MUKTI helped farmers perfect the technique for tilling “Dhoinche” back into the same soil that needs to be cultivated for paddy later. Thus it improved soil fertility considerably.

Propelling the ideology of sustainable agriculture forward, MUKTI introduced techniques of organic kitchen garden establishments to maximum use vacant lands in smaller spaces around their homesteads. Small land-holding farmers were encouraged to grow vegetables in small their small homesteads, cemented rings, broken pots, jute bags and bamboo baskets. Thus, nutritional enrichment was aspired for aiming at smaller but induced more effective farming techniques amongst the marginalized families. For this, MUKTI distributed them vegetable and supported them with the required skills by conducting trainings, meetings and workshops.

Ideas to Institutions
In November 2012, MUKTI formed an autonomous body called “MOFA” (Mukti Organic Farmers Association) to formally institutionalize the ethics of SAM. The body started with a 800-members for providing sustainable farming solutions from end to end and address various issues of agriculture.

MOFA has conducted more than100 training sessions till date, where it reached out to 2000 farmers. It has also conducted 7 follow up training sessions to maintain a thread of continuity to the ideology. Going forward they plan to conduct 20 more training sessions in the year to come involving 40 farmers in each session. MOFA also plans to distribute rice seeds, vegetable seeds and Dhoinche seeds within the MUKTI framework. In 2013, MUKTI has distributed 20 quintals of Dhoinche to about 852 farmers and disbursed 1.2 lakh rupees in the form of loans to multiple farmers for improving agriculture and agro-based income. In the year 2012 Mukti promoted more that 400 acre of land under sustainable agriculture model.

The way ahead
With the SAM project, MUKTI has been able to infuse farmers with the required faith in their most precious asset of all, their land. In a region where sustainable agriculture maps very closely to sustainable livelihood, this effort goes a long way to impact poverty statistics. Thinking the regeneration and improvement to mind that devastation to development stories is no longer restricted to Japan, and we could better go ahead for agriculture reforms with our courage. Courage is sprouting in small leguminous roots in the Sunderbans but sustainable ideologies like this make MUKTI a realistic visionary in a way that we need not wait to see the results.