May 2009: KMS Vision Convergence and Action Planning

CInI had though got regional partners for KMS, but a feeling of vision convergence was felt so that all could move ahead with a single vision and clear mission. Thus a vision convergence and action planning workshop was planned and organized by CInI, at Chausala Dahod.

As the idea was to pass on the vision to program teams on field, persons of teams on field were asked especially, to attend the workshop as representatives of partner organizations. Besides practitioners, maize scientists and representatives of farmer groups were also part of the workshop discussions.

Workshop Discussions and Outcomes:

Workshops comprehensively discussed findings of recently conducted ‘Gap Analysis (on local maize cultivation practice) study and major constrains those culminate into low productions and low productivity of maize in Central Indian tribal belt. Maize scenario in Central India Tribal areas, was presented in detail by CInI. Experience of national and international research institutions were also shared. The efforts of second day especially focused on arriving to a consensus of Vision and Mission of the program and accordingly plan for first season’s pilot phase.

[Details in workshop proceedings in side bar.]

The outcome of workshop, besides vision convergence, was Plan for 2009’s Kharif season. As all the partners agreed that farmers need to be gradually introduced with detailed yet complex techniques, the plan was kept to be modest starting with composite varieties and with few technical interventions.

[Details in workshop proceedings in side bar.]

Seed Procurement:

Post workshop, lot of emphasis was put on timely procurement of seeds for further distribution among the farmers. For it, different universities, state seed corporations, Beej sanghs, research stations, KVKs were contacted. After doing all enquiry and necessary liaison, CInI provided, to its partners, details of contact persons to procure desired seed varieties. Thus procurement was planned in following manner:

GM 6, Narmada Moti, JVM 421 (White Composites) for Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat areas
while Mahi Kanchan (Yellow Composite) and Mahi Dhawal (White Composite) for Rajasthan areas

Micro Plan by Partners:

A micro plan was agreed to be submitted by the all the partners to CInI, to enable it to plan efficiently for monitoring of program. However except SADGURU Dahod, no other team’s plan came. CInI finally decided to discuss micro plan with respective team’s representatives in Service Provider’s training planned in June.

Plan to use Dibblers under Agri Mechanization:

On another side CInI, to pilot sowing by hand dibblers, enquired with Central Institute for Agriculture Engineering (CIAE) for Naveen and Rotary Dibbler. CInI once convinced with their utility and other features, placed order of providing them to KMS in address of NLRI Ratlam by 3rd June 2009.

KMS Theme's presentation in CInI Annual Partners’ Meet:

In the last week of May 2009, KMS presented itself as a theme to address food insufficiency and for making it an additional source of income, by promoting it as a commercial crop, for tribal families. Though a lot of queries came to KMS like, how KMS is visualizing addressing food security and commercial farming together, CInI KMS theme Anchor and KMS Resource person, lucidly clarified doubts. Possibilities of various sectoral engagements were also discussed in presentation.

April 2009: Networking for Partnerships

CInI had though done a preliminary screening to select its partners in KMS Pilot Phase, it left no stone unturned to comprehend the view point of its partners, on maize stablisation.

Accordingly meeting was done with SADGURU Foundation (Dahod, Gujarat), Grameen Vikas Trust (GVT Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh) and People’s Education and Development Organization, (PEDO Dungarpur, Rajasthan).
• Main things those were discussed were sharing concept note on KMS [Document available in side bar]
• Vision and Mission of KMS.Interest of NGO Partner to work on Maize Stablisation
• Doubts (if any ) of the regional partner

Views of SADGURU Foundation : Mr. Harnath Jagawat, Director SADGURU Foundation, on one side expressed to see ‘sea changes’, through yield enhancements, he also shared their bad experience of being a partner to ‘yellow maize’ Monsanto seed distribution (100% subsidy) program in previous season. He shared that in whole of central Indian Tribal belt, farmers take maize as their staple food and tribals of North Gujarat and western M.P., for consumption, prefer white maize produced with low chemical inputs.

SADGURU also shared a heavily loaded (technically) Package of Practice (PoP) of some university, which they diffused among the farmers in previous season. SADGURU however, also admitted that it was not used in full by the farmers for various reasons.They opined, demonstrations and experiments should now be replaced with some better extension strategy.

Views of GVT Jhabua : GVT on the matter of PoP, was clear that few critical strategic points should be put in front of farmers and they should not be suddenly told to take up the heavily loaded PoPs, as this may lead to sharp decline in adoption of technique, once extended support is withdrawn. They also expressed that full program should be farmer participatory. If demonstrations are planned, they should be planned for a single variety of maize for a long patch of land or that in whole village.

Views of PEDO Dungarpur: Mr. Devilal Vyas, Director PEDO, shared that they are already implementing National Agriculture Innovation Project (NAIP), with Udaipur university., taking Hybrid varieties. This program is in 5 villages. Though he was more inclined towards hybrid intervention, he expressed to be a part of KMS even if it is taken with non hybrids.

Cost Sharing & Program building Partnership: As resources were found to be limited with KMS, regional partners were request to share some cost i.e. seed money & attending workshops of KMS. [Details in KMS Partnership Document]

Meeting with Agriculture Extension Department (Udaipur Technical and Agriculture University): Efforts were also done to convince Agriculture extension department, Udaipur University, to be a part of KMS program but they expressed their extreme business in assignments already in hands. In order to better analyse the current situation and gaps existing, Gap analysis study was planned and conducted with the partners.

Maize Value Chain Study: A Maize Value Chain study was also initiated to identify the missing link on different value enhancing points. Findings of preliminary visits indicated that highest demand in local maize market is that of maize as grain for house hold consumption. Thus a high scaled maize production was required for filling gap of food deficiency.

March 2009 : Building Perspectives and Plans for KMS

March was, to a great extent, month busy in planning and presenting plan and budget outlays across the team members and concerned departments. For KMS a comprehensive work plan was developed and presented in front of the team members. An outlay of 6 lakhs was budgeted for first years activity. In first year 120 to 200 farmers were thought to be taken from four different regions of where partners were working.
The highlights of work-plan under various major role heads of CInI specifying activity and expected outcome were as below:

Research and Knowledge Management:
•Maize yield enhancement scope study –
•Market avenue exploratory study- Database for supply chain and value
chain in 4 regions
•Workshops for partners for common visioning (ab initio), comparative analysis (in middle) and cross sharing the learning of KMS (at last) -- Workshop Proceedings & Action Plan for next year

•Farmer shivirs (at last) --- Feed back remarks reflecting their interest to get involved
•Process Documenatation and generation of colloquial IEC material --- IEC material


Idea Incubation:
•PoP development --- PoP developed in consultation with ERP, KVKs, Patner Organisations
•Field Pilots -----10 to 20 field trials in each region
•Field demonstrations for farmers ---- demonstration done to at least 50 farmers per village
•Farmer to farmer learning ---- at least 40% positive feedback remarks collected from farmers

Networking and Co-ordination with
•Regional field partners (for field demos) - Networking with 4 to 6 regional field partners
•KVKs and other Govt. depts. (for wide extension) – At least one extension partner in each region
•Academic Institutions (research interns) – Production of mutual studies and papers
•Market players (for Value and supply chain establishment)- Value chain and supply chain linkages
Undertaking regular Monitoring
•Development of Scale of Growth - Periodic growth analysis

Monitoring and Review
•Periodic progress reviews – Periodic progress review reports and feedbacks for partners
Aim to cover 30,000 farmer families three year perspective plan/ outreach was also shared.

March 2009 : Paving Paths and putting milestones

March was a month that brought lot of mental exercise. All the CInI themes were asked to prepare three year work plan clearly spelling out activities under each functional set of roles envisaged by CInI. Themes were to submit outreach plan for next three years and a time line of activities for the first year.It was very difficult to plot the outreach of a program without getting any exposure of what different problems could come in program's expansion in the first year.
like all other themes of CInI, KMS Strategic (Work) Plan was prepared and presented in TataNagar. The team members appriciated it and gave minor suggestions for further improvement.

Feb 2009: Seeding of the ideas

One of the few learning of CInI, from IWMI Tata Water Policy Program was, to work on Kharif crops in tribal regions to discourage starving tribal families from taking up forced migration. CInI, also taking learning of 'Kharif Paddy Stablisation' a similar program taken in east, started organising its thoughts for western regions of central India. CInI took note of Maize, which is being consumed in tribal areas of these regions as staple food crop and on whom food security of tribal families depend a lot.

1. CInI prepared basic concept note on Kharif Maize Stablisation, based on its desk research. It reflected the performance and potential of maize in national and international market; state wise performance of maize in India and problems of Central Indian Tribal areas and finally vision of KMS.
2. CInI started search for a suitable[1] person as KMS resource person.
3. Got CVs or references of four to five persons -Mr. Arun Joshi (Head NLRI), Dr. Rangnekar (Independent Consultant) , Mr Dixit (…)
4. Desk Research was done to graphically plot fluctuation in KMS production in Tribal districts of Maize growing Central western states.
5. Meeting was done with Dr Rangnekar, who expressed his extreme busyness in proposed consultancy period.
6. Dialouge’s when done with Mr. Dixit, impressions came that he is not so passionate to participate in this program.
7. Discussion was done with Mr. Joshi at NLRI, sharing with him basic concept note. Mr. Joshi suggested not to follow any PoP of University but introducing a farmer friendly strategy in-front of farmers and understanding what is feasible for them. He recommended to start with composite varieties. He showed his extra interest in the assignment as he had great passion for the crop and had worked for same crop for last 20 years.
8. Discusion with Dr. Dhatt (SRTT) – suggested some important points in maize cultivation. He too recommended to start with composite varieties in consultation with farmers, local traders and KVKs about the most suitable ones.
9. Mean while CIMMYT International communicated with SRTT to initiate a collaborative work around Maize. This communication was forwarded to CInI. As CInI shared with him its wish to address food insufficiency situation by enhancing the maize yields, CIMMYT denounced it asking – why composites when Hybrids have high potential for increasing the yields.
10. Second round discussion was done with Mr. Joshi who gave an account of yellow maize promotion program done in Rajeev Gandhi’s era. He told that farmers in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are so much particular about the taste and colour and as the programs were not participative it failed in terms of adoption. And as the tribals in this region are not in habit of replacing the seeds annually Hybrids would show results in first year but in next season their would be a risk of farmers going back to sow their own seeds.
11. Based on this clarification was done to CIMMYT that composites have been taken mainly for three reasons (1) It will allow farmers to remain assured about seeds for next three years. (2) The aim is to make agriculture less costly, as farmers don’t have enough money to purchase hybrids year after year. (3) Composites in comparison to Hybrids are low input responsive and thus farmer won’t have to worry much about costly inputs.

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[1] Suitablity of person was to be judged by one’s knowledge in the subject and specifically experience of putting programs on ground. Besides one’s attitude and willingness to come one step ahead by reflecting one’s passion and commitment to own program was also to be looked. This was done by reviewing of CVs asked by reference and talking in phone and then meeting them.

Welcome

Dear Reader(s),

Welcome to blogspot Kharif Maize Stablisation!!!

To share some estimates with you..

• More than 10 million tribal families of South Rajasthan, North Maharashtra, North Gujarat and South East Madhya Pradesh are totally dependent on Maize productions.

• A large number of them are food deficient for 3 to 4 months every year.

• Unavailability of quality seeds and lack of farmer friendly improved technology culminates into low maize productions.


Kharif Maize Stablisation (KMS), working on these and other major fronts, envisions to ensure year round food security and to enhance standard of living of tribal farmers in these areas.

Kharif Maize Stablisation is a strategic theme of CInI for impacting tribal livelihoods in western parts of Central India viz. South Rajasthan, South East Madhya Pradesh, North Gujarat and North Maharashtra.

Blogspot Kharif Maize Stablisation is an endeavor of CInI to update society at large about the happenings around the maize under KMS and other such projects.Where KMS wish to update you on the happenings as desired, it also look forward to listen from you, in whatever form you wish, put accross your ideas on subject 'Maize and Tribal livelihoods'.

Happy reading!!!