Improving His Farm for His Family Now and for Generations to Come
Joining a men’s self-help group in early 2016 has given Mr. Klatswer an opportunity to make a fresh start as a farmer on the land he’d given up on. The program began in 2015 to support farmers in addressing the community’s widespread loss of soil fertility over years due to slash-and-burn agriculture and the misuse of fertilizers and other inputs.
Mr. Klatswer, like most of his neighbors, had been witnessing soil deterioration that severely reduced his yields of rice and his cash crop of broom grass. With less income from his land and less ability to feed his family of 10, he’d abandoned farming, was working as a day laborer, and often had to resort to borrowing money to buy food.
Mr. Klatswer’s group received training on improved farming techniques, leadership skills, and basic health and nutrition. He adopted organic rice production practices and learned vegetable gardening to improve and diversify his family’s diet. Composting reduced his costs and improved his results enough that he took out a small loan from his men’s savings group for more seeds and land preparation. He’s terracing and using plants as barriers to halt erosion on his sloping upland fields, and dedicating the added space to growing fruit like pineapples, lemons and oranges.
Thanks to Your Support and Generosity
• 342 farmers have adopted the Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) method and are no longer practicing detrimental slash-and-burn farming
• Rice yields have increased by 50% and participants now have sufficient food to last them for an entire year. At the beginning of the program the average was only seven months.
India Umsning Program
Led by World Renew and Local Partner NEICORD
4/19