Spending time in Mohadi

A week or so after the training at Chetana Vikas, I decided it was time we visited Mohadi again. We live around 250km from the village, so it's quite a trek to get there, but always worth it. This time, I had my friend Sue with me as she wanted to see what it's like in an Indian village (and also wanted to meet with the local wildlife!). My thanks are due to her again for all the great pictures (all copyright Susan loose).

We spent 5 days at the village, living with my brother in law and his wife in their small house on the outskirts of the village. My 85 year old mother-in-law was also staying with us, but we all managed to squeeze in (just about!). Apart from the loud festival music starting at 5am and finishing at 12pm, it was restful! It was so nice waking up with the sun and being greeted by the buffaloes and cows outside, heating our bath water on the wood fire and chatting with the local families and schoolchildren over chai before school began. Leela was in her element, dashing around in the dirt and following the cows and chickens.

 

My family in Mohadi. From left, Shakuntula, my mother-in-law, 

Lalita, my sister-in-law, Leela, and Prabhakar, my brother-in-law

We were very well looked after by all of the villagers. Each day we were invited for food at another person's home and the food was wonderful and much appreciated. Sue would often go for a morning walk to capture the beautiful sunrise colours. Here's one of my favorite shots.

 

Dogs at sunrise, Mohadi

We spent a whole day with the CNVF farmers. We started with a short workshop, where we talked about what they had learnt at Chetana Vikas. Prabhakar Kadam, our good friend and person driving the CNVF in Mohadi, described the methods to those farmers who could not attend. It was good to touch base after the training and see that it had been very useful for them.

 

Prabhakar talking about the training at Chetana Vikas

After a short discussion, we headed out to visit some farms. Despite the midday heat, we managed to cover quite a bit of ground. We had a rest under a Neem tree to talk again about the methods we are trying to adopt. We also checked the wells in the fields. It was a poor monsoon last year. Even in January the water was around 30 feet below ground level, far lower than it should have been. Prabhakar told us that every year they must blast the wells even deeper, removing more and more stone, just to get at more water. This is a worrying trend. 

 

Helloooooo... any water down there?.......

                                     

  Samantha with rubble from recent well blast

I asked why there were so few trees out on the field boundaries and the answer was clear. "Trees cast shadows, which lowers a farmer's productivity". We talked about the effects of removing trees on lowering water tables, which means more energy must be put into bringing up water, again eating into a farmer's budget. They agreed that they usually tend to look at short term impacts, such as shading, and don't know about or consider long term impacts. I intend to talk more about this in another workshop sometime soon to see if a compromise can be reached. What about planting trees that also give a yield on the boundaries ? Fruit? Timber? Something to explore....

Another highlight was being invited to Sarkinnhi, a nearby village. The deputy sarpanch (village head) of Mohadi, Mr Indal, took me to meet the Sarkinnhi villagers one afternoon to talk to them about our CNVF work in Mohadi. We were welcomed with flowers and then I asked questions about their village. At Sarkinnhi, there is a very active homeopathic doctor who has been improving the environmental health of the village for the last few years. Together with a committee, he has been encouraging villagers to install latrines in their homes, as well as educating people about personal hygiene. They have also been planting trees along the village streets and keeping it more clean and tidy. It was really inspiring. I then followed this by asking about their farming, and just like all local villages, people are suffering at the hands of chemical farming. This being a health conscious village, I asked about whether they have been suffering any ill effects due to the chemicals they use. Every farmer agreed that after spraying, they feel very unwell and their skin burns and itches. After a tour of the village, they all agreed that when possible, they too would like to join our project. So soon, we hope to have a Centre for Non-Violent Farming in Sarkinnhi too!

We left the village after five days of enjoyment and I miss it already. We'll be going back in the second week of March to deliver a two day workshop. On the first day, we will look at the basics of permaculture, followed by an introduction to zone 1 / kitchen gardening on the second day. At the moment, I'm buy writing a progress report and preparing the materials for teaching. It's all go.

And one more VERY exciting development has been unearthed this last week. I was emailed about the new Farmers' Handbook developed by Chris Evans and Jakob Jespersen in Nepal. This book will be perfect as an introduction to permaculture and sustainable agriculture here, so we're in the process of working out how to get it translated into Marathi. I will certainly be referring to it a LOT during my workshops!

Some scenes from our visit to Mohadi

What is the CNVF?

Last year, when I first moved to live in India from the UK, I was so shocked to find out that hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide here over the last 10 years or so. Even today, we see reports of suicides in the local press. In fact, we're in a bit of a crisis zone, in the so-called 'suicide belt' in Yavatmal District, Maharashtra. Here, as in the rest of India, farmers have been getting into crippling debts, caused by trying to convert from traditional farming methods to more 'hi-tech', western approaches, started during India's Green Revolution. These days, farmers are bombarded with advertising that tells them all their problems will be solved if they simply grow the newest cash crops, such as BT Cotton, a genetically modified (GM) species.

BT Cotton Flower (SamB)

However, these crops are very expensive to grow - the seeds are expensive, the plants do not set seed so more has to be bought each year, the chemicals needed to grow them successfully are expensive - and to top it all, the price of these cash crop products is falling on the world market. Advertised as being 'pest resistant', the cash crops tend to be very badly hit by no end of pests, which leads to new plant varieties entering the market, more cash being demanded for seeds and chemicals... the cycle continues and continues, until the farmer, who already has very little, is so steeped in debt that he feels he has no other option but to end his life... and during this time, it's highly likely that he has caused extensive damage to his land too through the extensive use of dangerous and highly toxic pesticides. All in all, it's a very Violent farming revolution... violent for the farming community as people, and violent to the environment as soil impoverishment and 'death' often results.

I started the Centre for Non-Violent Farming along with my husband and a group of farmers within a village called Mohadi. This is where my husband grew up and where our family has farm land. Nearly every family in the village are farming families. It's their sole income in most cases. We wanted to help them out of their difficulties, as farming here is not easy.

The Centre's aims are as follows:

• Allow farmers to help themselves create a sustainable future for their families through farming in a non-violent manner.

• Facilitate networking of farmers with resources that will allow them to become informed and self-sufficient.

• Help farmers become more self-reliant and less dependent on external inputs for their farming.

• Restore and protect the natural environment surrounding farms to allow regeneration of ecosystem health and stability.

• Show farmers and villagers the benefits of caring for their environment and farming in a non-violent way.

• Spread what we have learnt to other villages so that they can also use these methods.

We hope to meet these aims by doing the following:

• Create a library of resources relating to sustainable, non-violent farming and land management methods, including organic methods, permaculture design and natural farming (Masanobu Fukuoka’s method).

• Translate and publish key texts in local languages, namely Marathi for the Mohadi farmers.

• Train farmers in research and observation skills.

• Provide workshops for farmers on non-violent farming methodologies.

• Facilitate travel to, and attendance of, workshops and training led by other sustainable farming organisations.

• Arrange visits to other projects and farms using non-violent farming methods.

• Convert 15 acres of agricultural land near to Yavatmal to a ‘non-violent farm’, which will act as a training resource for farmers, as well as a research centre for the CNVF.

• Provide opportunities for international exchange of knowledge and ideas through conferences and travel to other countries, including bringing farmers using non-violent farming methods to visit and work in Mohadi and other villages.

• Through publicity and articles, raise awareness, locally, nationally and internationally, of the Indian farming situation and the solutions non-violent farming can offer.