Proponent
Living Farms
Date/Timeframe and location
2008 onwards and Rayagada and Kalahandi districts of Odisha , India
Main responsible entity
Mr. Debjeet Sarangi
Nutrition context
Odisha, in Eastern India, is home to 9.6 million Adivasis (Indigenous communities) constituting about 22% of the entire state’s population. Under nutrition is prevalent on a large scale among these communities. According to UNICEF, in Odisha, 57 per cent of Adivasi children under five years of age suffer from chronic malnutrition. The situation among rural Adivasi children aged 18-23 months is even more serious with prevalence of stunting as high as 83 per cent.
A 2013 study by the same organization, shows that the proportion of chronically undernourished Adivasi children increased with increasing age – one-fourth in the age group 0-5 months, which doubled in 6-11 months period and at 18 months, 75% children were already chronically undernourished. This is compounded by repetitive attacks of illness and lack of access to quality health care due to many structural barriers. Every time a child falls sick her/ his growth falters without a proper catch up of growth. So, repeated illnesses contribute to under nutrition of children. However, this being a state average data, it does not provide disaggregated information about such children in underserved blocks. The nutritional status of such children will vary across the communities.
According to a baseline done by Living Farms in 2011, in 46 villages in two blocks of Rayagada district based on anthropometric measurement of 693 children under 5 years of age, in a time frame of 12 months, 23 deaths of children below one year out of 171 live births was reported. This roughly amounts to 131 deaths per 1000 live births, which is much higher than the reported district level IMR of 83/1000 while state level IMR is recorded to be 69/1000. 41 newborn deaths were reported out of 1000 live births. Of the 138 pregnant women 13.8% were found to be malnourished with a MUAC less than 21 cm. In the category of mothers of children below 2 years, 53 percent women were in the category of under nutrition with BMI less than 18.5. In 79% of the cases complementary food is given for only 3 times a day.
Key characteristics of the food system(s) considered
Historically, Adivasi communities live immersed in the forest-fields and all living and non-living things in this space are a part of the food system. The cultivation of food co-exists with a great respect for the land. Dongria kondh adivasis may or may not have a small piece of land of their own, but traditionally have co-depended on forest-lands in a mountain or hill surrounding their villages. In these forests, they have practiced shifting cultivation, leaving the lands fallow for long periods of time. In scattered small patches of land, one will encounter a mixed cropping of 50-70 varieties of cultivated foods: grains, millets, pulses, oil seeds, tubers, greens and other vegetables. In addition, people have great knowledge of wild foods, collecting close to 275 varieties, from different depths of the forest.
However, there has been an alarming level of shrinking of farm level crop diversity and the availability of forest foods (quantity and diversity) is on the decline. It is because the focus of the most of the agriculture programs in Odisha has been on increasing yields of rice and that of forestry to raise revenue generation through plantation of industrial monocultures and / or converting the forests for development projects. It results in non-availability of diverse, safe and nutritious foods throughout the year for the Adivasi and other forest dependent rural communities. It is largely because agriculture, forestry, food and nutrition are seen independent of each other, even though what food is grown and how it is grown determines its nutritional value. Similarly, most of the nutritional programmes are divorced from agriculture, forestry and food security.
While the latter situation describes a system where food is a mere object to be produced, in the Adivasi communtiy, the foods, soil, fruits, insects, trees all co-exist and are not divorced from other parts of life.
Key characteristics of the investment made
We are choosing a non techno-scientific approach, an approach that chooses to partner instead of instruct, which challenges the very notion of ‘investments’ or interventions from the outside. Instead, we believe that Adivasi communities, such as the kondhs, have lessons to benefit all of humanity in their communitarian ethos, respect and co-existence with the forests.
As an organization with respect for the abilities and wisdom of local communities, especially women, Living Farms has been partnering with them in understanding the underlying ethos of their perspectives, and to further strengthen their preparedness to not only recognize and analyze the nature and causes of the issues in the context of food, and nutrition security that affect them, but also to evolve locally appropriate empowering solutions through action research and / or adapt successful models to address household food insecurity, reduce maternal and child under nutrition and contribute to wellbeing of communities. We help in development of local leadership, horizontal networking amongst villages and deepening and widening the impact of the change process. In addition, together we mobilize community to assert their rights over resources and demand accountability from the system while the organization works with the government to improve the effectiveness of its delivery mechanism.
Key actors and stakeholders involved (including through south-south/triangular exchanges, if any)
In our approach, we are trying to break down the dichotomy of “actor-stakeholder” and instead we are trying to generate a feeling of belonging, involvement and one-ness. We believe in the agency of a community to dream and transform their community.
Here, we present the various actors:
Living farms has a team of around 250 field workers: district coordinators, block coordinators and gram panchayat facilitators, most of who belong to the same administrative block in which they are working. At the same time, in each village there is a nutrition or peer educator who works along with government voluntary health and crèche workers. It is believed that, women are the leaders of this team of village educators.
At the same time we collaborate with researchers and other social networks to take forward a component of action-research. This action-research will be always conducted along with the community, and then utilized to propose policy changes at the level of the State. Contrary to many social methods, in our method we choose to see the local community as the biggest actors who transform their own lives, while making demands to the State, who we see as essentially a worker of the community.
Therefore, in our work relations we wish to transform both internally and externally the dichotomies and hierarchies that have existed in the face of “issues” such as malnutrition.
We have been working closely with the State Governments of Odisha and Chattisgarh and UNICEF on promoting Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture.
Key changes (intended and unintended) as a result of the investment/s
To contribute to improved nutrition of children aged under 2 of Adivasi and other under served and / or unreached rural communities in Odisha.
i) A reduction of .5 standard deviation on height for age growth for Adivasi children aged under two .In other words if the median malnutrition status is -1.9 Height-for- Age Z Score (HAZ) of children aged under two in 2016 then it will be -1.4 Height-for- Age Z Score (HAZ) in 2025 if the program achieve its goal .It implies there will be less number of under two children in Red and more in Green category in a height for age growth chart for boys and girls separately.
ii) A mechanism is incorporated within the Government of Odisha regulatory framework to ensure convergence between and amongst related departments, (women & child development, health, agriculture, education, rural development and scheduled tribe & scheduled caste etc.) and coherence in policy formulation, planning and implementation to address under nutrition of children aged under 2 of Adivasi and other under served and / or unreached rural communities.
iii) Enabled and empowered rural communities are leading and taking responsibility in decentralized planning, monitoring and implementation based on the principles of equity and justice and public ~public partnership (citizens and government), to facilitate governance reforms to make their villages free from under nutrition.
Challenges faced
In the current scenario, we found that within our own team we often faced the challenge where as facilitators we remained on the outside, i.e. it was a struggle to break down the duality between “actor and stakeholder.”
A big challenge was to take this on, therefore, the first step in our process is to build our sensitivity towards the ethos of Adivasi communities with a focus on deep listening, reflection that guides action and continues in a repeated cycle. In this process, inspired by Paulo Freire’s praxis, we try and break down the notion of actors and stakeholders, but instead begin to transform ourselves into co-actors. It is important to mobilize ourselves internally and emotionally sensitivize ourselves to the people and issues we are walking with, so that we are motivated to act above and beyond our jobs, and begin to dream of a different story and society.
Lessons/Key messages
One of the key learnings has been that stakeholders, actors or a system are not external to the humans living in it. In that sense, a system is not something outside of us, but we are immersed within it. In that sense, one of the biggest lessons from the Adivasi communities has been that of an “ethos”, one that is lived as well as practiced at the same time, therefore it is alive.
Another key message has been that of complementarity. In the capitalist world, competition is encouraged in “healthy” or “unhealthy” forms as something that makes us more efficient, but in the course of such behavior we rarely stop to question what happens to the relationship between things in such a situation.
Adivasi communities practice complementarity: sharing seeds, foods, joys and sorrows, and therefore are most able to take care of themselves in dire circumstances. This complementarity when nurtured and strengthened to live with dignity and demand what is necessary, is what is key in creating a healthy Adivasi society, one that is free from malnutrition or other systemic evils.
Living Farms