Saturday on the Farm
On Saturday the children here have a half-day at school,
something I’m glad I never had to do… So we had an Indian start to the day of
waiting patiently for all the staff from other aspects of SEDS to arrive so
that we could attend the staff meeting before visiting the school. We keep
getting told that you always need a Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, etc… in India
because things change all the time and you have to go with the flow, and this certainly
happened on Saturday. The staff meeting was moved to the afternoon, so we had a
visit to the production centre – which I found really interesting – and then spent
a short time in classes with the children. I was in a maths class, at first
observing and then at the end doing a short question and answer session with
the children to practice their English.
SEDS operates in at least 5 sub-districts, or mandals, in the Anantapur district of south western Andhra Pradesh. Population pressure here is high, and most people work in agriculture, which is the main source of the local economy. However, soil here is not very rich and as more and more natural forest has been cleared over time for agriculture, desertification has occurred. The area misses out on most rain from both eastern and western monsoons and is very drought-prone, so with the lack of forest cover and the poor, dry soil, when it does rain the water washes away quickly, eroding topsoil, damaging buildings, and silting up water reservoirs and other water conduits.
Common social problems in the area over the years include poverty; poor education opportunities and high rates of school drop-out; rural unemployment and migration away to urban areas; fragmentation of family lands due to inheritance and the dissolution of larger family groups, leading to farming becoming financially non-viable; suicide of indebted farmers; food insecurity and loss of livestock due to environmental conditions; dacoity (highway robbers) and naxalism (political Maoist rebels). These issues can be compounded by the area's political instability and inefficient bureaucracy.
SEDS itself was founded by Manil and Rajan in 1980, with a mission of improving the livelihoods of farmers reliant on rain-fed agriculture by building their capacities to efficiently develop use and enhance the natural indigenous resources. The SEDS vision is people's empowerment through social education and environmental development.
Over the 38 years of SEDS, various projects have been conducted. Some have not worked well, some have worked but have gone on to be taken over by government facilities instead, such as the healthcare programs of training village health workers and providing clinics. Others have been handed over to the local people to maintain after they were established, such as the really interesting watershed management program (I will describe this better in another post).
The current SEDS projects include the school, administering the child sponsorship program in the area, the sponsors for this come from Australia through the charity Partners in Aid; sustainable agriculture and low carbon agriculture programs; and the biogas program, which I am interested to learn more about when we get the chance to go on some fieldwork with the SEDS staff.
The afternoon plan changed as well because the staff meeting
got cancelled altogether. A land encroachment issue on some of the family’s
private land meant that Manil needed to spend the day visiting the police
station and trying to sort it out, and her entire staff had gone to lend her their
support. Apparently Indian justice systems and civil matters etc are not very efficient to sort out. We therefore spent Saturday afternoon into evening with Ronny going
through powerpoints on the history of SEDS and their projects.
SEDS operates in at least 5 sub-districts, or mandals, in the Anantapur district of south western Andhra Pradesh. Population pressure here is high, and most people work in agriculture, which is the main source of the local economy. However, soil here is not very rich and as more and more natural forest has been cleared over time for agriculture, desertification has occurred. The area misses out on most rain from both eastern and western monsoons and is very drought-prone, so with the lack of forest cover and the poor, dry soil, when it does rain the water washes away quickly, eroding topsoil, damaging buildings, and silting up water reservoirs and other water conduits.
Common social problems in the area over the years include poverty; poor education opportunities and high rates of school drop-out; rural unemployment and migration away to urban areas; fragmentation of family lands due to inheritance and the dissolution of larger family groups, leading to farming becoming financially non-viable; suicide of indebted farmers; food insecurity and loss of livestock due to environmental conditions; dacoity (highway robbers) and naxalism (political Maoist rebels). These issues can be compounded by the area's political instability and inefficient bureaucracy.
SEDS itself was founded by Manil and Rajan in 1980, with a mission of improving the livelihoods of farmers reliant on rain-fed agriculture by building their capacities to efficiently develop use and enhance the natural indigenous resources. The SEDS vision is people's empowerment through social education and environmental development.
Over the 38 years of SEDS, various projects have been conducted. Some have not worked well, some have worked but have gone on to be taken over by government facilities instead, such as the healthcare programs of training village health workers and providing clinics. Others have been handed over to the local people to maintain after they were established, such as the really interesting watershed management program (I will describe this better in another post).
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| Before watershed management (picture: SEDS) |
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| After watershed management (picture: SEDS) |
The current SEDS projects include the school, administering the child sponsorship program in the area, the sponsors for this come from Australia through the charity Partners in Aid; sustainable agriculture and low carbon agriculture programs; and the biogas program, which I am interested to learn more about when we get the chance to go on some fieldwork with the SEDS staff.
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