I liked that "Chambers of Farming" idea, which is
similar to the co-operative farming suggestion, I made
in my response. Whatever name we give it that does
not matter but there should be some process or
organization that could act on behalf of the farmers
in each village. Taking advantage of the mechnization
suggested by Manjusha is good but it is possible with
bigger land holdings. In many cases most of our land
holdings are very fragmented. If we try to integrate
the small land holdings held by many small/medium
farmers together, there comes the important issue
Chandu raised - emotional attachment to the land,
which may be the stumbling blcok for the collective
farming either through a Village Chamber of Farming or
Farming Co-operative Society. We cannot coerce this
new structure on the farmers against their will to
hold on to their small piece of land holdings. The
best way is to buy in their willing support.
With the help of the Govt, how about we take a
moderately educated but a small village as a model in
each of our districts and try to influence the farmers
there to join the Chamber as members. The members
elect a small admin group to oversee the day-day to
functions of the Chamber. With the help of the members
and an Agricultural expert attached to the Chamber,
they can decide the best crops, seeds, fertilizers,
tools, technology, mechanization appropriate for a
particular region/area in the village keeping in mind
the soil composition, water availability, operating
costs and productivity upon harvesting. Initially,
the Govt. may help the Chamber to stabilize with some
incentives. The returns would be distributed
according to the stake of the farmer (proportion to
their land holding). Once these model villages
demonstrate how productive and successful of the
co-operative farming, other villages may follow
suit....just a thought...may be someone could
elaborate.
Thanks,
Sagar Yerramsetti.
--- Chandu Sambasiva Rao <srchandu@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I like the idea of "Chambers of Farming". Some thing
> got into my mind
> and I can't get over it. (Should I try?) Instead of
> Govt taking the
> lead and forming a politically charged bodies to
> start with, can we
> encourage "Public Private Partnerships" here too?
> Can every chamber be
> a govt. partner but independent for all other
> reasons? Can they be part
> of a self governing echo systems?
>
> Another observation that I am interested in is,
> having smaller chunks
> of land may not be very suitable to apply and take
> advantage of latest
> farm technologies, . But in India, like in any other
> country, land
> ownership is more emotional than any other type of
> property. How we get
> our farmers to take advantage of modern tools and
> techniques that are
> so easily available to corporate farms?
>
> Can we encourage "Corporate Farms - Indian Style" at
> village level,
> where participating Farmers are stakeholders and no
> one else. Their
> stake is determined by the land they contribute to
> the "larger-farm"?
>
> Do you think this will fly? What happens to
> individual control and
> pride? What else can plague such a seemingly benign
> strategy? What safe
> guards are needed?
>
> Regards,
> Chandu
>
>
Thanks,
Sagar Yerramsetti.
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