District Covered:- Shahdol, Singroli, Anooppur, Dindori and Vidisha covered 12 block in Madhya Pradesh

Supported by: - Farmer Welfare and Agriculture Development Dept. Govt. of MADHYA PRADESH While the land and water resources development programme creates a basis for productive agriculture, the agriculture productivity enhancement programme under atma project aims to optimize agriculture productivity. Interventions are designed with the participation of farmers in technology development and dissemination. adopting the principle of technology development (PTD). During 2012-13, SVSS has covered 852 families under agriculture productivity enhancement programme under the ATMA Programme. The details are given in the following sections. With an added zeal to the experiences of the year 2012-13, initiative was taken by SVSS in gearing up and energizing the demonstration programme and in its operational areas as one of its prime activities. As the organization had become successful in its endeavor in the earlier phase and set an example for replication in other places, it has taken up the challenge for promoting and making the 2nd year programme a successful one. For creating awareness about the programmes among the farmers a series of awareness meetings have been organized in every village of the operational GPs before the implementation of the programme Demonstration (Agricultue) Under this programme demonstration of agriculture seed support namely soyabean,has been provided to 60 farmers 12 villages along with organic manure and Multi-micro nutrient, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), for application. For encouraging organic farming and as the cattle wealth is not much in the area,we motivate farmers for the Vermi compost units.During the reporting year, 52 farmers had opted for this programme with the equal numbers of vermin compost units. Most of the farmers use the vermin compost for organic farming and those who are either landless or have less land sell the worms with good returns. Demonstration (Allied) Promotion of Vegetables Crops In recent years, we have been giving good deal of focus on the cultivation of vegetables on small patch of land of small and marginal farmers. Under the demonstration (allied) we have demonstrated 20 demos on various vegetables, while large numbers of farmers are opting for traditional method of vegetables cultivation, there are now many farmers who are raising creeper vegetables under trellis (Mandwa) system. There are several advantages of this method of vegetables besides very high level of production. During the year, under report, 78 new farmers opted for this method of vegetables cultivation. Farmers themselves started using cheaper material for this system using Bamboo, Teak etc which is under experimentation at present. Besides above crops, our farmers have started opting for turmeric, ginger, onion,garlic ,onion etc at good scale and earning handsome amount. Finally, the tribal farmers are on way of becoming progressive farmers by adopting new crops, better agriculture practices and earning good amount on marginal land. Promotion of Horticulture and Agro Forestry We have successfully demonstrate the 4 no demos plots of horticulture - flower crops and agro forestry in the programme, SVSS has been supporting farmers to undertake horticulture plantation especially in the land ehich are left fallow normally and short duration crop like papaya as inter cropping. Cumulatively 18 horticulture plots have been developed by the farmers which is a massive achievement in backward region. During the year 2012-13 about 10 farmers had opted for flower crops and half of them opted for roses. Farmer Farm Field School/Exposure Visits The Purpose of Farmers field School (FFS) is the extension of technologies through a participatory and trickle down approach along with grooming of local leaders for future extension. FFS is a virtual in situ school where the farmers are given hands on training on various productivity enhancement technologies with primary focus on learning by doing. During the period 12 farm school established in the various villages, block and different district. Typically one FFS would cover 50-80 farmers from one village and cater to their training needs on Good Agriculture Practices (GAP). These farmers are taught progressive farming practices through participatory learning. Front line Demonstration (FLD) plots are used to exhibit specific techniques in isolation and farmers are encouraged to experiment on their own fields. There are also inter and intra village exposure visiting other farmer’s field school initiatives agriculture universities, and KVK. The objective here is to expose farmers on various agriculture technologies, test and validate them under their own management conditions so as to improve adoption of technologies by the farmers. Capacity Building Programme The community Institutions that are groomed for the agriculture productivity enhancement programme at the village level include SHGs, activity based Livelihood Groups and Kishan clubs for general agriculture technology promotion, vegetables growers groups etc. The concept of lead farmers/ Achiever farmers is practiced to engage them as agents for dissemination of farmers preferred technologies developed through the method of farmer field school. The total training conducted by us is 36 numbers during the reporting period. The significant amount of resources and time are spent for the capacity building of the farmers for agriculture technology development and dissemination. For all these activities, Technical inputs were provided by the department of Agriculture during this period. Moreover, progress of the activities is being reviewed jointly by the ATMA team and SVSS.