“Before that, we harvested two bags of finger millet and about five to six bags of paddy each year. We would get Rs 3,000 per acre for the millet and Rs 2,000 for the paddy,” he says. With an annual income of Rs 10,000, Kirkire had planned to migrate to Thane city to work as a labourer during the non-agricultural seasons. But he no longer needs to do that.
In 1993, Government funding helped the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) intervene in the aftermath of the malnutrition deaths. The BAIF initiated the wadi concept of three-tier agriculture—forestry at the boundaries, followed by horticulture (mid-term investment) and paddy, millet or vegetables (for immediate income) at the centre. It brought 1,000 families under the wadi plan and in 1997, through European Union funding, it added another 2,400 families to its scheme.
“We have close to 3,400 families in 40 villages (out of the 107 villages of Jawhar block) who are into production. To take it beyond production to retail, we tied up with USAID to help with exports,” says Deepak Patil, technical advisor of BAIF, in charge of this Growth Oriented Micro Enterprise Development project funded by US Agency for International Development.
The farmers here will sell their crop to the cooperative they have formed, which has tied up with retail chains for exports.
The results of all these initiatives are already showing. Seasonal migration from the block has reduced. “There has been a tremendous reduction in the seasonal migration. Those who do go, rarely take their families and come back within 15 days, ” says B.B. Bhosale, regional in charge of BAIF’s outfit in Maharashtra— MITRA ( Maharashtra Institute of Technology Transfer for Rural Areas).
Among the few farmers who also have a nursery in Jawhar, Kirkire now gets an additional income of Rs 1 lakh per annum. His wife, Mira, agrees that life has improved. In the last four years, the Kirkire family has upgraded to a pucca house. The family now has a health insurance policy for Rs 50,000. Kirkire says proudly, “We have also laid a water pipeline.”
