Tera village located in the Harichanderpur block of Raebareli district of Uttar Pradesh is one of the poorest villages in the state and was reported by the Times of India issue on 5.9.2009 as at the verge of famine. Till date none of the development programmes of the state and central has reached the village except the present NAIP-III project. Since it comes under the project district an effort was made to adopt the village under the NAIP-III project. The village was constrained with regular floods and draught in lowlands and poor productivity in the uplands. The average income of the marginal farmer in the village was Rs.21000/-.
Most of the farmers were resistant to change from rice-wheat system and expressed that already they were at the verge of poverty they don’t want to take any risk. However, a handful of them came to adopt the innovative low cost income generating interventions of off season vegetable cultivation. Sh.Ram Bahadur is a typical representative of such farmer who earned their livelihood through cultivation of rice-wheat-mustard in 0.35 -0.6 ha and one or two bovines. An annual income of Rs.23,700/- was being obtained from agriculture which comprised of Rs.15,400 from rice-wheat, Rs.3600/- from vegetables (potato, tomato and cucumber) and Rs.4700/- from milk. His land was partitioned as 0.15 ha for wheat with varietal change and the other 0.15 ha was used for winter hybrid vegetable (tomato and cabbage) cultivation supplemented with vermicomposting and Trichoderma and Psuedomonads based liquid and farm manures. He earned about Rs.13,000 from vegetables in winter and Rs.5600 from wheat. From this technological backup he also went for summer vegetable cultivation with cucumber, muskmelon and bhendi with elite varieties, mulching and compost supplementation in 0.25 ha. Banana with moong gram as intercrop in about 0.075 ha was taken up with the income generated from initial winter vegetables. An income of Rs.13,450 was generated with the summer vegetables and moong gram.
Apart from this the milk yielding potential of the cow was increased from 2 liters/ day to 4 liters/day with mineral mixture supplementation, deworming and fodder which earned him Rs.9000/-. His total income from winter and summer season was Rs.41, 050/-. The standing banana crops which have started to throw bunch will be ready to harvest by December or January which will fetch him another 56,000 rupees as income @ of Rs.7.00/kg. Hence his total income will certainly be around Rs.97,050/-. His investment apart from planting materials was Rs.15,500/- under variable cost. Only family labour was utilized for cultivation. About 200 mandays were used for the above purpose. He is happy that he will be able to give his daughter in marriage this year. Like him many farmers like Sh.Sant Ram, Sh.Ram Kilavan, Sh.Sambhu, Sh.Basharat, Sh.Ayodyhya Prasad and others earned an average income of Rs.25000/- from vegetable cultivation in their half acre land and went for banana cultivation in the current season. Some of the farmers as Shri sambhu harvested Rs. 36000/- from off season cauliflower and Rs. 26500/- from tomato. Now, as per their version, due to ICAR/NAIP guidance and support they are out of poverty cycle and will guide farmers of nearby villages for coming out of poverty trap. These small modules of integration would be a stepping stone in the lives of poor farmers who are poorer than the marginal farmer criteria of less than a ha.
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