ECOLOGICAL FARMING

Ecological Farming ensures healthy farming and healthy food for today and tomorrow, by protecting soil, water and climate, promotes biodiversity, and does not contaminate the environment with chemical inputs or genetic engineering.

BENEFITS OF ECOLOGICAL FARMING

Ecological farming provides the ability of communities to feed themselves and ensures a future of healthy farming and healthy food to all people.
Ecological farming protects soils from erosion and degradation, increases soil fertility, conserves water and natural habitats and reduces emission of greenhouse gases.
Ecological farming is both a climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy. Ecological farming can provide large-scale carbon sinks and offer many other options for mitigation of climate change. In addition, farming with biodiversity is the most effective strategy to adapt agriculture to future climatic conditions. A mix of different crops and varieties in one field is a proven and highly reliable farming method to increase resilience to erratic weather changes.
Ecological farming both relies on and protects nature by taking advantage of natural goods and services, such as biodiversity, nutrient cycling, soil regeneration and natural enemies of pests, and integrating these natural goods into agroecological systems that ensure food for all today and tomorrow.

Ecological Farming of Pineapple in Purulia, in 2022

The field of ecological farming is quite vast. There are many types of programs that can be done under this activity. Now, let us discuss on those programs that were run by us till now.

Value Addition in Traditional Crops

Area wise, we primarily focused on the traditional crops that were cultivated by the local villagers before we intervene. Under this effort we have often found the major crops that are traditional are Paddy, Tomatoes and Mustard. So, we are targeted these crops to ensure its value addition. For each of these crops we come with a value addition which help to increase the income of the beneficiary families. Using traditional husk lever, we produce traditional Hand Pounded Rice which are sold in much higher price by them. Same happened with Mustard when we bring the traditional Ghani Technology in mustard oil extraction. This method also increases the income of the beneficiaries.
In the upcoming years, we are going to bring dried Tomatoes which have a huge market in and outside India.
Currently 31 Beneficiaries are involved with us under this program.

Ecological Farming of Paddy in Ajodhya Hills, Purulia, West Bengal

Non-Timber Forest Procurements

Inside the Forest lands, there are plenty of non-timber forest products that can be used for trading directly or indirectly. For example, the sal leaves, kendu leaves, mahua flower can be sold directly as trading and indirectly triphala can be traded after collecting amla, Hartaki and Bahara. We also focus in this program very much. We have helped the villagers with market linkage, under which they have sold Triphala (Amla, Hartaki, Bahara), Tamarin Paste, Dry Aparajita Flower, Kalmegh Leaves, Sal Seeds & Leaves, Siali Leaves, so far.
Currently we are working on promoting various fruits, leaves twigs and other medicinal herbs which are basically found in the wild. Fruits such as, Kusum, Vela are currently in our list to promote in the market. We are also planning to bring Neem and Sal datun in the market. Moreover, a research work in currently ongoing to prepare a 100% natural herbal floor cleaner. If the research results become successful, It can become a good product to bring it in the market. All of these projects can only increase the income of the local villagers.
Currently 54 beneficiaries directly and more than 100 beneficiaries are indirectly involved with this program.

Collection of Sal Seeds from Forest Areas

Cultivation of Medicinal & Aromatic Crops

In many cultivable lands near the forest areas, massive drop of traditional crop cultivation has been noticed due to water crisis and elephant or deer or Wild Boar conflict. We promote the cultivation of MAP (Medicinal and Aromatic Crops) in these areas as they required very less water and no chance of crop damage from Wild animals as wild animals do not eat these crops. So far we have promoted the cultivation of Chia, Chamomile, Mentha, Tulsi and Kalmegh successfully.
Currently our aim is to increase our production of these crops up to 25% in the upcoming years, to provide proper supply throughout the year.
So far 75 beneficiaries are involved with this program. And many more are interested to be a part of it in the upcoming years.

Cultivation of Chamomile Flower from Bankura District, West Bengal

Livestock Management

This is comparatively a new program run by us under this activity. As per our data analysis, we come to the conclusion that, many livestock programs has been executed in the forest adjacent villages in the Chotanagpur Plateau region but most of them are totally failed and the remaining bring less than 20% success at least on this particular sector. The major reason behind this is lack of proper training, medical guidance has been provided by the agencies. Another huge issue is lack of market sources which basically resulted almost cost to cost income from these programs.
We are bringing some new approach in this sector. Firstly, we are providing proper livestock management training to the beneficiaries so that the number of deaths during rearing time decreases. Moreover, we are also ensuring proper market linkage for the beneficiaries so that the revenue margin become wider for the beneficiaries.
Currently more than 50 beneficiaries are attached with us, and we are hoping to increase this number to 150 within the next 2 years.

Inland Fishery near Hazaribagh, Jharkhand