Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty

CMSA is a paradigm shift in moving from input centric model to knowledge and skill based model. It involves making best use of locally available natural resources and takes best advantage of the natural processes. The main objective of CMSA is to bring sustainability to agricultural based livelihoods, with special focus on small and marginal farmers, tenants, agriculture labour and women. Its major objective is to making small farming viable. Capacity building is the key component in CMSA. Financial support is only in the form of capacity building and transfer of technology. Components of capacity building includes, life cycles of pests and on enabling climatic condition for disease prevalence and spreading, farming systems, sustainable use of resources, maximizing output from a unit land area, effective utilization of inputs like Seed, organic fertilizers, sun light, water, land etc. Conservation of Renewable Natural Resources and Genetic bio diversity both flora and fauna, and SRI in Paddy received special attention. Massive capacity building programs were organized to build the capacities of various stake holders. Farmer Field Schools (FFSs) are the main channel for delivery of extension services. Village Activists bring together all the farmers to attend weekly workshops in their own fields and training programs to discuss issues related to sustainable agriculture practice. The training is provided to units of farmer S.H.Gs. Each such S.H.G is a homogenous group, usually with contiguous land parcels, and participates in FFSs, facilitated by the VOs, for the delivery of extension services by Village Activists and Cluster Activist. In the first year of implementation, the focus is on replacing pesticide application and maintaining the yield. With success at this stage farmers move on to intensify sustainable practices and reduce external inputs. These FFSs create a local platform for experimenting and generation of localized technology solutions which are internalized by the participating farmers. In this paradigm, the farmers are encouraged to experiment, innovate and their innovations are shared among other farmers. Respect is accorded to farmers own initiatives. This approach is different from the mainstream attitude where the farmer is a passive recipient of ?knowledge? produced in formal agriculture research stations or universities. It is a very liberating approach and the momentum in our programme is fuelled by countless innovations of farmers and the pride they take in their ?research? efforts. Since the entire effort is based on local, natural and renewable resources, a key by product is that the farmers are performing valuable environmental services. These are as of now ?unpaid? services. In the context of Climate change they have the potential of mitigating climate change and also enabling them to adapt to climate change. CMSA is focusing on building community best practitioners in technology transfer. They are known as ?Community Resource Persons (CRPs)?. There are 86 state level CRPs deployed across the state. These CRPs provide extension support to farmers. These community leaders are role models, who have adopted CMSA practices successfully in their fields and improved their net incomes. The role of Community Resource Persons (CRPs) is critical for the expansion of CMSA and making it popular. CRPs are farmers who practice CMSA and demonstrate that it is profitable and practicable to other farmers. Each CRP adopts 3 villages where they provide expertise on sustainable practices and initiate new practioners of CMSA. They spend 15 days in a month in the 3 villages. The CRPs also identify farmers who show interest in practicing sustainable agriculture. Some of these farmers are shortlisted as CRPs after they gain first- hand experience and demonstrate effectively all the best practices. These new CRPs then start working with new groups of farmers expanding the network of CMSA farmers. This practice has led to a rapid scaling up of the program at a lower transaction cost and helped the program acquire ?social movement? characteristics.