DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Food Security and Livelihoods Promotion for the Poor

Rationale of the Project

RRN has been implementing first phase of Food Security and livelihood Promotion Project for Poor in two Village Development Committees (VDCs), namely Chainpur and Birendranagar, of Chitwan district of Nepal from May 2005 to April 2007. This project aims to support the rural poor, marginal farmers, women and socially excluded people for improving their livelihoods by enhancing household level food security through sustainable agriculture; soil management training, integrated pest management training and livestock management training programmes and providing seeds and seedling of vegetables and multipurpose plant species and livestock breeds. These all activities have diversified productive resources for income generation that has promoted better livelihood and enhance household level food security.

General Objective

The overall objective of this project is to support the rural poor, marginal farmers, women and socially excluded people for improving their livelihood by enhancing household level food security.

Specific objectives

• To improve the skills and knowledge of farmers on sustainable agriculture production by imparting different trainings on sustainable/ecological agriculture, Sustainable soil management practices and integrated pest management.
  
• To start pig and goat based income generating activities and
  
• To provide farmers with seeds and seedlings of locally adopted high yielding crops, vegetables, fruits and trees.
  

Beneficiaries

This project covered 334 families through 15 groups. The targeted beneficiaries are poorest of the poor, small and marginal farmer, dalit, excluded farmers and ethnic minorities.

Target & benificiaries of the project

Results

Sustainable/ ecological Agriculture: This program has targeted the poor and excluded people to help them earn their livelihoods by themselves through agriculture and natural resources management on a sustainable basis. This program have included components such as sustainable agriculture, Soil management and Integrated pest management. During this period RRN worked with 15 groups of 334 individual women members as the direct beneficiaries.

Integrated Pest Management: The IPM method emphasize on organic/botanical pesticides, physical and cultural control practices. This program has helped to raise the awareness on local indigenous knowledge regarding the judiciary use of chemicals. This programme with the farmer’s field schools approach have been proved to be effective to reduce the farmer’s dependency on harmful fertilizers and in turn also increased the production and the productivity of the land as well.

Sustainable Soil Management practices: The beneficiaries were educated on methods of organic farming which is environment friendly and improved soil condition. Crop rotation, mixed cropping and scientific method s of Farm Yard Manure preparation, management and its proper use, introduction of green manure were useful component included in this project, which improved the fertility status of soil and also proved to be beneficial for soil structure improvement.

Goat/pig based income: Goat/pig based income generation program focused the targeted landless and poor families. This group of target beneficiaries included the poorest, which have small land holding or their land were unproductive. The unproductive land were utilised for goat pen. The farmer also learnt the entrepreneurship development skill by managing (exchanging and sale) of the goat properly.

Seeds, Seedlings/Saplings distribution: Women farmers of the project were trained in Vegetable Production. The technical know how among the beneficiaries increased in different fields like the systematic kitchen gardening, nursery raising, transplanting, manuring, irrigation technique, plant protection, vegetables production, post harvest and food preservation. The income generated from sale of surplus vegetables was significantly higher which helped to improve their livelihood.