The Needs & Difficulties of Indian Farmers:
A failed or erratic monsoon in India has an immediate and significant impact to the crop / harvest. For the Indian farmer it is often of dire consequence as he is either forced to fold up his business by selling it in distress, moves to another line of work but more often than not has forced him to end his life under mounting debt, family pressure and hopelessness.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers'_suicides_in_India
But the issues and problems of farmers in India go far beyond the success or failure of a monsoon. These issues range from lack of credit, awareness & guidance camps, innovations not reaching them, supply of quality seeds, pesticides, farm implements, supply of electricity, erratic release of water from reservoirs, lack of market & commercial understanding, groundwater availability and a general lack of publicity of Govt. subsidy schemes among rural poor, particularly illiterate villagers.
The Project Idea:
In line with RI's Future Vision Plan as well as our Club's Strategic Planning Committee's 5 year vision plan, it was conceived to focus the Club into the development of long-term sustaining programs that addresses two elements namely "need based" and "capacity creation". The training and knowledge sharing program for a group of farmers belonging to these villages adequately addresses these elements.
The use of relatively low cost and technologically advanced practices has been very effectively implemented in the state of Israel and has literally converted a water scarce arid region into an agricultural haven. It is our belief that these farmers would be greatly benefitted by visiting this region and getting an opportunity to learn the skills, practices, methods & technology used. They would then bring this information back home to effectively convert and develop the similarly arid regions of Karjat and grow it into a model village like Israel.
Methodology:
(1) The VTT would consist of 5-7 Farmers accompanied with a knowledgeable Rotarian from our Club. We will select the appropriate candidates from our RCC region and the accompanying Rotarian will have language translational and agricultural skills to lead the team.
(2) We need your Club to become our Partner Club to host the VTT farmers to support a practical training program for anywhere from 15-20days to a couple of months. The modalities of their stay and the training schedule will be developed as we go along including use of Inter-Government schemes between Israel & India to assist in the program.
(3) Our Club will then ensure that when the VTT farmers return to India, we will arrange to impart this knowledge to the other farmers in the region under a well-conceived structure and supervision of our Club.
(4) To take it further, an exchange of a professional team from your region could be arranged where our Club would host them in Mumbai and arrange their visit to the farmlands and use this opportunity to mutually share these agricultural concepts with each other.
(5) This program is conceived to be an annual exchange between the 2 partner Clubs for the next 3-5 years and use each annual trip to focus on specific aspects of agricultural development such as:
i. Organic farming, multi crop farming
ii. Irrigation techniques - drip, hydroponic
iii. Urban farming
iv. Soil sciences
v. Other farming & agricultural concepts
We trust you see great value in this project and we look forward to any assistance from your Club.
Please contact the undersigned for any further information.
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