Resource poor small farmers from the rainfed regions in India are often adversely affected by high input intensive chemical farming and the vagaries of nature and the ever fluctuating markets. This is truer with cotton farmers. Cotton as a cash crop has always been considered a bug bear in international trade negotiations. The case of cotton farmers in the Chetna operational areas in India - Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, Western region of Orissa, since the beginning of the new millennium is well known for all these wrong reasons. Cotton is among the very few cash crops which is suitable for this region and continues to be the most popular choice for many smallholder farmers for two main reasons: 1. It almost fetches immediate cash returns and 2. The local agro-climatic conditions do not support production of either vegetables or other cash crops, excepting for pulses, cereals and recently Soya that are usually inter-cropped with cotton. Adilabad and Karim Nagar Districts in Andhra Pradesh; Amravathi, Akola and Yavatmal in Maharashtra and Kalahandi and Bolangir in Orissa are 97% rainfed in nature and are traditionally one of the largest cotton growing tracks in the country (10.0%). However, an agrarian crisis in the region for the last 7-8 years has taken a pandemic form and resulted in large number of suicides by the cotton farmers.

Background and evolution of Chetna

In this context, Chetna Organic & Fair Trade Cotton Intervention Program started in 2004 as a composite pilot on organic / non-pesticide management (NPM) & fair-trade supply chain development in India. This was more a spin off to the concluding FAO project. This also ensured the continuation of the expertise and highly trained and qualified FAO project staff – most of whom joined Chetna.

In the year 2007, to promote ownership among farmers over the program, Chetna Organic Farmers Association (COFA) registered as a national level farmers’ organization under the Societies Act, representing over 10, 000 smallholder cotton farmers. COFA works with the small holder farmers to ensure they directly benefit from the market, who otherwise, are largely exploited by the market forces. COFA raises funds, and works towards enabling favourable policies for the marginal farmers, COFA also plays a watch dog role in the Chetna Organic & FT Cotton Supply Chain to ensure that these farmers have a ‘fair say and a fair share’.

In February 2009, Chetna promoted Chetna Organic Agriculture Producer Company Ltd (COAPCL) as a farmer owned commodity trading company that works on developing sustainable market linkages for farmer’s produce in the national and the international markets. COAPCL is also involved in training and capacity building of farmer communities on issues such as quality management, local level market development, maintenance of organic standards and certification, etc.

Forum For Inetgrated Developmet (FFID) provides guardianship support to both COFA and COAPCL to evolve into professional and well established farmers’ support organizations, to work towards improving the livelihood options of the smallholder farmers from rainfed regions by making their farming systems more profitable and sustainable.

Sustainable farmer owned and managed institutions

Chetna believes in enabling the disadvantaged farming communities to organise themselves so that they are empowered to deal with the financial, commodities and services markets in an aggregated fashion and takeover the responsibility of their own development. Chetna continues to organize the farmers into community based organizations based on the program implementation and requirement while promoting cooperatives at cluster level and brings them into Chetna Organic Farmers Association as member institutions and Chetna Organic Agriculture Producer Company Limited (COAPCL) as shareholders.

Chetna Organic Farmers Association (COFA) as process owner of the entire program would strive to build the capacities of the member cooperatives and COAPCL in governance, operational management and developing strategic business plans with the support from guardian organization FFID to help them evolve into member owned and managed sustainable institutions.

Building Sustainable Institutions

Promotion of integrated farming systems Soil health and fertility has declined drastically; the farm ecosystem which includes earthworms, beneficial insects, birds and diverse plants, has been badly disrupted in chemical farms; water systems have been poisoned; and groundwater has been depleted creating extensive dark zones. Farmers are being drastically affected by the productivity decline despite heavier fertilizer application.

In this context, Chetna is promoting the ecologically sustainable integrated farming systems as a powerful tool for meeting development and sustainability goals by empowering farmers to innovatively manage soils, water, biological resources, pests, disease vectors, genetic diversity, and conserve natural resources in a culturally appropriate manner. Chetna would strive to re-orient the support systems available for the farmers and gear up its technical extension and research towards ecological agriculture, and create the synergies required to make ecologically sustainable integrated farming systems successful at a large scale.

Integrated Farming Systems

Sustainable Management of Natural Resources

An estimated 60% of cultivated land suffers from soil erosion, water logging, salinity and 5-10 billion tons of topsoil is lost annually from soil erosion. Groundwater tables are falling fast and forest cover is under threat. The inter-relationship and inter-dependencies among water, land, vegetation and animal resources determine the nature and kind of livelihood support systems particularly in rural areas. Depletion of natural resource base and increasing biomass demand of expanding human and livestock population are the major threats those affecting the livelihoods of the smallholder farmers from rain fed regions. The degeneration of natural resources, particularly in rainfed areas, is assuming alarming proportion.

Natural resource management is congruent with the concept of sustainable development, a scientific principle that forms a basis for sustainable global land management and environmental governance to conserve and preserve natural resources. Hence, Chetna would emphasis on management of natural resources such as and, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations. Towards this, Chetna partnered with diverse agencies in Government and other development agencies such as Department of Rural Development, Agriculture, NABARD and NREGS to implement various Watershed and Natural Resource Management Programs to take up interventions.

Good practices demonstrated by Chetna through the implementation of Indo-German Watershed Development Program, Western Orissa NREGS Consortium would be basis for taking up the interventions.

Natural Resources Management

Diversification of household livelihoods portfolio

The economic policies adopted by the Government regarding agriculture have not improved the economic status of farmers; hence ‘vibrant village economies’ have remained only in dreams. The increasing impoverishment of farming had a cascading effect on all sections of people living off agriculture including agricultural workers and tenant farmers and it is also correlated to food and nutritional insecurity.

In this context, Chetna would continue its efforts to improve the livelihoods portfolio of farming households not only from agriculture but also through agri-allied sectors such as animal husbandry, fisheries, horticulture and non-farm sector. Chetna would establish revolving loan funds at the cooperatives and other community based organization with the trade surplus generated, donations from the brands and fund allocations from the programs towards livelihood improvement component to effectively utilize the funds for diversification of to ensure generating minimum living incomes for the farming households.

Improving Livelihood Options

Value chain development

If a farmer is a business man, then he should be able to decide on ‘what to sell’, negotiate on ‘at what price to sell’ and determine ‘when to sell’. But, exogenous factors such as drastic climatic variations, input-expensive farming practices and market cartels deny him this right.

Chetna would engage in developing ethical value chains for various commodities in collaboration and with farmers as equal partner based on the principles of ecological (hence Organic), and social (hence Fair Trade) sustainability and profitability at the same time (self supporting). Towards this, Chetna would provide support to the Chetna Organic Agriculture Producer Company Limited (COAPCL) and other cooperatives to achieve financial and institutional self sufficiency required for adding value to the base products during processing so that these products can create their own niche in the markets.

Value Chain Management

Food security and nutrition

Despite rapid economic growth in the past two decades, India is unlikely to meet the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of cutting the proportion of hungry people by half. Per capita availability, as well as consumption of food grains, in India has declined since 1996; the percentage of underweight children has remained stagnant between 1998 and 2006; and the calorie consumption of the bottom half of the population has been consistently declining since 1987. In short, all indicators point to the hard fact that endemic hunger continues to afflict a large proportion of not only general Indian population but also the farming community due to the mono-cropping and promotion of cash crops.

In this context, Chetna has identified food and nutrition security as the cross cutting theme to support resource poor farmers (most of whom are tribal) of the rainfed regions, and sees a close connection between food and nutritional security to the livelihood security of the farming household. Chetna would develop programs on crop diversification, promoting backyard vegetable and horticulture gardens, school gardens and grain banks to achieve food and nutritional security for the small holder growers.

Food Security and Nutrition

Gender mainstreaming and child welfare

The modern day agriculture is entirely dependent on the ‘green revolution’, ‘gene revolution’ and for various reasons, women have been contributing more time than ever before on agriculture activities besides managing the household work. Yet, ironically, women have been neglected in the decision making issues related to agriculture and family welfare. This is more so evident in farming households which grow crops like cotton which contributes to the cash economy of the families. Chetna would work on reducing the drudgery of women, capacitating women to access and control the production resources and play a major role in the decision making in household, community and institutional spheres.

Gender Mainstreaming and Child welfare

Seed sovereignty

Seed is another critical resource under threat. Privatization of the seed sector has been accompanied by poor regulation and unbridled processes of handing over control of the most valuable seed varieties and germplasm to the corporate sector. Chetna Organic believes in the seed sovereignty and security as a prerequisite for the livelihood security of the smallholder household. Moreover, various traditional varieties of crops (Cereals, oilseeds, pulses, cash crops, fruits, vegetables, and flowers), indigenous livestock and poultry breed are becoming extinct and inaccessible. Chetna would work towards reversing the trend toward extinction of local crop varieties to maintain the diversity. To achieve this, Chetna set up participatory evaluation of seed verities in partnership with University of Agriculture Sciences in Lanjigarh (Orissa) with replication trails in each of the operational area where in all the verities of crops and rare breeds of animals will be conserved to build it as learning center for the farmers to emulate the similar models of ecological and integrated farming systems model. Apart from this, Chetna would support farmers to undertake interventions for reclaiming the seed security and conserving the depleting germplasm through seed banks and other initiatives.

Seed Sovereignty