FAO in India

Success stories

Mannem Buddaiah hails from Mannemvaripalle village in Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh. He ekes out a living by farming on his 5-acre farmland. Most of the farmlands in this region are largely rain-fed and as there is no surface water sources in the village, farmers depended solely on groundwater for irrigation. Prior to APFAMGS project, Mannem Buddaiah irrigated his farms through two borewells and raised sweet orange, chilly, rice and cotton on his farmland.

Pashu Sakhi: Women help enhance rural livelihoods

Saad, a remote village in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh with 350 households largely relied on farming as their sole source of income generation. The FAO supported SAPPLPP project came as a boon to these families because they were introduced to alternative source of income through backyard poultry. Selling chicken in the local market started fetching them good money and soon many families joined in keeping backyard poultry.

 

 

Subharathi lives in a remote village in Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh. Her village is surrounded by farm fields all around and a large irrigation tank in the middle. In the last few years there has been acute scarcity of water more so for drinking purpose. "Nature has been unkind to us and the rainfall has failed to bless the village. I am told this is all due to our negligence in respecting various forms of nature. I wish we respect and fear nature and offer it our daily prayers" she remarks. As the monsoon has been failure many wells including very deep borewells have started to give reduced amount of water affecting the crops. "I became very concerned when the wells began to give limited water and some of them went dry. A curse of nature I believed".

Ramilabehen, Surtibai, Tulshibai and thirty other women from 20 villages in two project clusters of SA PPLPP are undergoing an unexpected transformation, as they get groomed to be the champions of preventive and primary health care for backyard poultry and goats in their respective villages. These capable but semi-literate women were identified by their communities as appropriate emissaries for provision of health care services to the community at the village level, and subsequently underwent a rigorous training to gain knowledge and hone their skills.

In Tamil Nadu's (TN) Pudukottai district on India's east coastline, the rivalry between traditional fishermen and owners of mechanized trawlers is growing. The culprit is the push nets that trawlers use, scraping the bottom of the sea. Besides juvenile fish it nets a whole range of life forms found on the seabed, including seaweeds. Precious fish breeding habitat is destroyed and diminishing the catch size. The push nets that the traditional boatmen use are "mini trawls".

Yet, across Pudukottai's 32 fishing villages, they have decided to stop its use, thanks to FAO's co-management process through its Fisheries Management for Sustainable Livelihoods (FIMSUL) project. By agreeing to save the marine ecosystem in the shallow Palk Bay waters, they will be safeguarding the source of their future sustenance.