|
Organisation
|
Reviving
the Green Revolution (RGR) Cell, Punjab
Agricultural University, Ludhiana |
|
Project
name
|
Popularisation of nutrition gardens
managed by village women for year round
vegetable production for domestic consumption
of farming families of Punjab |
|
Grant
operationalised
|
May
2011 |
|
Duration
|
2 years |
|
Grant
amount sanctioned
|
Rs4.83 million |
Activities within
the grant and impact:
The support to RGR Cell is to scale up the
project ‘Integrated Nutrition Garden’
piloted by DoEE; through its extensive outreach
to 500 villages in Punjab. The project would
continue ongoing efforts towards educating
farmers to ensure nutritional security of
their families through production of food
items within their own farms, whilst at
the same time, demonstrating the profitability
and viability of these integrated nutrition
gardens.
The key components of the project are:
|
|
Selection
of demonstration sites / service provider |
|
|
Two-day training
of service provider / field officers
(FO) at PAU, followed by training of
selected farmers by FOs assisted by
AVRDC/PAU staff |
|
|
Sowing of kharif
/ summer vegetables |
|
|
Monitoring of
nutrition garden units and recording
of yield data |
|
|
Sowing of nursery
(cauliflower and cabbage) |
|
|
Sowing of nursery
(chilli, capsicum and tomato) |
|
|
Sowing of rabi
vegetables |
|
|
Conducting a field
day on nutrition garden. |
In the first year, 2,000 farming families
from 100 villages would be adopted to establish
a nutrition garden in a plot of six square
metres, which is sufficient to provide enough
vegetables for a family of 4-5 members.
However, since the benefits of readily available
vegetables for home consumption from this
model are obvious, it is expected that many
other families of the adopted villages would
like to be covered under the project. Technical
information will be shared with all the
villagers. In the second year, a total of
4,000 households would be directly benefited
from this intervention, which in turn would
attract many more farmers to adopt this
type of vegetable production. It would not
only save an annual expenditure of Rs10,000
per family on purchase of vegetables but
would provide fresh and pesticide-free vegetables
on a regular basis throughout the year.
Apart from increased consumption of vegetables,
the project would ensure annual savings
to the tune of Rs10 million. Since the sequence
of vegetables has been developed on the
basis of balanced nutrition, it will have
a long-term effect on human health. Moreover,
the vegetables available in the market are
never fresh; consequently, they suffer from
loss of nutrients. Since training in production
of vegetable seeds in these kitchen gardens
is an integral part of the project, it would
popularise vegetable growing among rural
communities.
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