Sunita Birhor, a twenty years old woman from a pre agrarian society of Demotand village of Jhakhand starts cultivation in her kitchen garden for the first time. She has received the training on establishment of Organic Nutrition Garden, production of organic inputs from IBRAD. She has started a nutrition garden and started cultivating different types of vegetables in organic manner.
The Birhors mainly depend on the forest based products. With the introduction of forest laws, their access to the forest has diminished. The degradation of the forest and restrictions on their access to forest has forced them out of their traditional occupation. Till now they are practising rope making out of the fibres of a particular species of vine which they sell in the nearby market. Some of them are now settled into stable agriculture but small land holding, lack of access to new skills and technologies, increasing production costs all put the forest fringe tribal farmers at an edge.
Due to poverty these people are suffering from malnourishment. For meeting the immediate need for nutrition for the community and to start the use of the organic method of farming IBRAD trains the members of the Birhor community about establishing an organic nutrition garden. After getting training from IBRAD on organic farming, land preparation and use of organic pesticide, Sunita starts to cultivate in her own land behind her house. She follows all the steps of establishing a nutrition garden as seedbed preparation with the organic ball, mulching the bed, organic seed treatment practice before seed sowing, fencing the garden, etc. IBRAD gives capacity building training to the community on organic farming practices and gives handholding support by giving Azophos a fungicide and seed to them. Now they have practiced multiple vegetables cultivation in the nutrition garden. Through the activity, they found interest in growing vegetables for their daily consumption.
She cultivated Tomato, Ladies Finger, Bitter Gourd, Beans in her vacant land. There are three members in her family. She now feed them nutritious vegetables and now has no need to buy vegetables from the market. She consumed ten kg beans and almost similar amount of tomatoes, bitter gourd and ladies finger. Not only that, Sunita sold 10kg of each vegetables to the nearby market.
Sunita who even can’t sign her name now became confident that she can also feed her family with the help of her kitchen garden. Now Sunita is encouraging other Birhors for cultivating organic farming in their vacant land.
Sunita is an example of how with proper skills and provided with an enabling environment to use her latent potentials can lead from the front to bring changes at the village level.
