Building resilience of flood-prone families through farmers’ field schools
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Authors
Prakash Khadka
Issue Date
16/03/2017
Type
Language
en
Keywords
Agriculture , Disasters
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Abstract
Attending a farmers’ field school and switching to a diversifying cropping pattern has helped the Chaudhary family become flood resilient. Meena Chaudhary, 27, lives with her husband and two children in the Dhami Tole, Narayanpur Village Development Committee (VDC) of Kailali District in the Karnali floodplains in Nepal. She comes from a family of farmers and grows rice, wheat and mustard. Meena’s family works on other people’s land on a sharecropping basis and they only own two kattha (1 Kattha = 3645 sq.ft) of land. The amount of crops they produced was not enough to meet their annual expenses and the situation was made worse following the catastrophic flooding in 2014. Almost every year, Dhami Tole is affected by Karnali floods – leaving its marks on people living in poverty with minimal livelihood options. In August 2015, Meena attended a Farmers’ Field School (FFS) and started growing off-seasonal vegetables following a training programme there with her fellow farmers from Dhami Tole. Further training with weekly discussions and various classes has helped improve her skills and confidence in growing vegetables and increase her income. During her first harvest, she sold 100kg of cauliflower and 50kg of cabbage, earning 12,500 Nepalese rupees (£88). With the profit, her family rented one kattha of land in February 2016 for vegetables farming and they grew cucumbers, selling 800kg cucumber in the local market in Rajapur and Narayanpur earning 18,250 Nepalese rupees (£129). Meena also sold her vegetables six days a week at the Krishi Haat Bazaar (agriculture market) in different market centres and also from her farm directly to customers known to her. In April 2016 her family rented another 2.5 kattha land. They now have 5.5 kattha of land on which to grow vegetables. Following this success, her husband left his job as a labourer and joined Meena in growing and selling vegetables, which has freed up time for her to spend with their children. Meena learned about vegetable farming including nursery bed preparation, growing seedlings, transplanting seedlings, harvesting and market management. The farmers who attended the farmer field school are part of a formal farmers’ group called Shanti Mahila Krishak Samuha. Meena is one of 25 members (all of whom are women) and is currently serving as a treasurer for the group. The group has formally registered with nearest agriculture service centre and has the potential to benefit through improved access to information, technical support and new technologies in addition to support to cope with flood losses from disasters. Prior to her success, Meena used to take out loans from cooperatives to purchase seeds and fertilisers for her crops but struggled to pay the loans back when she didn’t have a good harvest. In the 2014 floods, her house was damaged; the wall of her house collapsed and the flood destroyed her paddy crop standing on 15 Kattha (54675 sq.ft) of land. The land was taken on lease to cultivate crops and the money came from a loan from a local cooperative but her family venture was put into risk and it took more than a year to pay back the loan. However in 2015, with the income from the vegetables during a non-flooding season, they have paid back the loan and deposited money in a saving account in a local cooperative that they can use during future emergency situations. Being engaged in the farmer field school and disaster risk reduction activities, she is also aware that they would receive early information in case there is flooding through warning new flood early warning system. (The story was collected by Prakash Khadka working with Centre for Social Development and Research, Practical Action’s local partner for the Nepal Flood Resilience Project.)
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