Sustainable Rural Development, Food Security and Clean Environment
Genesis
Mahatma Gandhi visited Urulikanchan, a backward village near Pune, in 1946 to establish a Nature Cure Centre. His trusted disciple Manibhai Desai who was assigned the responsibility of management worked closely with the villagers to tackle their problems. He established the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF), a non-profit, Public Charitable Trust in 1967 to replicate his experiences in rural development. BAIF has now been renamed asBAIF Development Research Foundation.
THE BAIF MISSION
BAIF's Mission is to create opportunities of gainful self-employment for the rural families, especially disadvantaged sections, ensuring sustainable livelihood, enriched environment, improved quality of life and good human values. This is being achieved through development research, effective use of local resources, extension of appropriate technologies and upgradation of skills and capabilities with community participation. BAIF is a non-political, secular and professionally managed organisation.
PROGRAMME APPROACH
To address the problems of the poor families who live in a heterogeneous society, BAIF has developed the following strategy:
* Consider each BPL family as the unit of development
* Multi-disciplinary village cluster development approach for socio economic development
* Blend development with applied research and training
* Promotion of people's organisations for programme implementation and sustainability
* Ensure empowerment of women, education and community health for better quality of life * Integrate environmental protection with livelihood programmes
PROGRAMME COVERAGE
Various programmes are implemented by BAIF and its Associate Organisations in more than 45,000 villages in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand.
Development of good quality dairy animals is a powerful tool for gainful self-employment which reaches more than 2.5 million families through more than 1600 cattle development centres. Each centre headed by a trained technician provides mobile breeding and advisory services to dairy farmers located in a cluster of 10-15 villages.
The breeding services cover over 1.2 million cows and buffaloes mostly owned by small farmers and over 250,000 superior quality female calves are born every year. The crossbreds come into milk production at the age of 3 years and yield over 2500kg milk/lactation, to generate a surplus of Rs 7000-8000 per year. Presently, over 0.6 million cows are yielding milk worth US$ 415 million (Rs. 1700 crores) per annum.
BAIF is maintaining an elite herd of Jersey and Holstein Friesian breeds at the Central Research Station, Urulikanchan to produce superior bulls for semen collection. With a view to conserve native breeds, Gir, Amritmahal, Hallikar, Sahiwal, Khillar, Tharparkar, Krishna Valley, Ongole and Dangi breeds of cattle, Surti, Murrah and Jafrabadi breeds of buffaloes and bucks of Sirohi, Osmanabadi, Jamnapari and Barbari goats are also maintained. The Semen Freezing Laboratory with ISO 9002 certification produces over 4.5 million doses of frozen semen annually. Embryo Transfer Technology for production of elite bulls and genetic conservation of indigenous breeds is the unique feature of this laboratory.
With a view to boost the income of landless and small farmers, particularly women who are depending on goat husbandry, best practices of breeding and feeding have been evolved in a pilot project launched in West Bengal. Looking to the success, this programme is being replicated in other states.
Research on non-conventional forage and feeds has been undertaken and relevant technologies are being disseminated in the field to improve the profitability of dairy farming. Forage production is being promoted through selection and breeding of suitable varieties and seed multiplication.
Conservation of water resources and efficient use of available water are the major goals. While implementing various watershed development projects, new methods have been invented for harvesting rain water and to ensure equitable distribution through users' organisations.In
Karnataka, the network of farm ponds
has demonstrated the potential to
recharge open wells as well as
borewells and to revive the rivulets.
In Rajasthan, watershed development
alongwith community pasture
development and improvement in agricultural lands could help farmers to
combat drought. In drought prone Saurashtra region of Gujarat, dairy
husbandry linked with watershed development could sustain the interest of
the local communities.
In Kanpur Rural district of Uttar Pradesh, efficient
use of water resources was clubbed with ravine land development. The
villagers could take advantage of the increase in ground water table by
installing shallow tube wells under joint ownership and harvest two bumper
crops annually. Sodic land development in Uttar Pradesh demonstrated the
feasibility of reclaiming such wastelands through community initiatives.
The watershed development programme spread over 0.4 million ha and
benefitting 77600 families in 840 villages has intensified the cropping area
and increased the yield by 30-40%.
Agroforestry has been promoted to improve the productivity of degraded lands owned by the community and small farmers. BAIF played a major role in popularising versatile Hawaiian Giant variety of Leucaena in India. Multipurpose tree species of economic importance such as leucaena, acacia, dalbergia, gliricidia, melia, neem, teak and bamboo are promoted on degraded lands and farm boundaries to improve the land productivity and eco-system. Studies on economic viability of Jatropha cultivation under different systems are in progress.
Eco friendly farming practices such as organic farming, vermicomposting, use of biofertilisers and biopesticides are promoted through awareness, training and input supply. Cultivation of medicinal herbs, floriculture, sericulture and mushroom production have also been promoted to enhance the farm income.
