The following presentation was made as part of the panel presented at CASID Conference 2013 at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, 3-6 June 2013.
Marginalization of
millets: Impacts of labour out-migration on food security and wellbeing of
smallholder farmers in rural India
Hom Gartaula, Kirit Patel, Derek Johnson and Dinesh
Moghariya
It is evident that green revolution
has proved a technological advancement in agriculture and contributed to global
food security. However, the way it has impacted the semi-arid tribal rural
areas is different than the areas where there is high potential for high-input
commercial agriculture. One of the resulting effects of green revolution in
such semi-arid rainfed areas is the increasing trend of labour out-migration. The
paper aims to contribute to our understanding of contemporary rural India by
exploring wellbeing of the smallholder farmers in fulfilling their role in the
ecology of practice. The paper uses
both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Primarily drawing from a
household survey conducted among the 138 households from two sites in India (68
from Anchetty, Tamil Nadu and 70 from Semiliguda, Odisha), the study
shows that wellbeing is correlated with location, migration status and millet
growing status of the respondent households with varied degrees of association. It is revealed that small millets are
one of the major crops grown in the semi-arid rainfed farming systems in India,
but due to farmers’ increasing engagement with other non-farm and off-farm
activities the incentive to grow this traditional and culturally important crop
is decreasing. The increasing importance of diverse livelihood activities does
not only change the existing ways of living, but it also gives rise to new
pathways that does not necessarily embrace the traditional value systems,
beliefs and mores. However, one has to be aware that it is a part of the wider
process of sociocultural transformation and a means to the ecology of practice,
which can go along with or without the aid of labour out-migration.
This material is copyright protected
No comments:
Post a Comment