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In India, agriculture is at the heart of village life and productivity. However, many parts of India are facing a large-scale agrarian crisis.

This crisis is a result of a number of factors such as:

- Rampant mono-culture farming practices with a heavy dependence on seeds needing high inputs and chemical pesticides

- Depletion of soil quality as a result of the above putting the farmers further in the vicious cycle of pumping more expensive chemicals into their soil, and therefore also incurring a heavy financial burden

- Erratic monsoon patterns and unseasonal rains (a direct result of the global climate change) causing heavy damage to the already fragile crops

- Rapid urbanization has reduced forest cover leading to wildlife encroachment on fields resulting in destruction of crops. Wild boars, blue bulls, peacocks and monkeys.

- All these resulting in poor yield of crops leading farmers and their families into debt trap

All of the above factors have compounded the miseries of an average farmer in India to the extent that farmers cannot often meet their basic needs to provide for their families due to erratic variations in productivity and growth on their land. Thus, more than half of farmers want to quit their jobs, and many unfortunately feel pushed to commit suicide.

As you see, the issues are complex and inter-related. Evidently, the solutions to this crisis aren’t simplistic either. Chetana-Vikas works with farmers in Central India with a vision of providing economic stability and quality of life to farm men and women. We aim to develop alternative models in agriculture and marketing which make the farmer family self-reliant and have ensured livelihood security.

Our objective for our agricultural development program is to promote Knowledge-Attitudes-Skills amongst farmers in order to improve the productivity of their land, profitability of their farming business, sustainability of their resources, and stability and quality of life for them and their families.

Our programs for achieving our objective: We have 5 key programs as part of our agricultural development initiative. These programs are all closely tied with one another:

1) Sustainable Agriculture with small and marginal farmers.

2) Bio-diversify farming for Food & Nutrition Security.

3) Soil and water conservation.

4) Seed Sovereignty (Beej Swaraj)

5) Alternative marketing building Producer-Consumer relationship.

6) Low cost solutions to prevent wildlife encroachment Chetana-Vikas conducts workshops where farmers receive education and hands-on training on these programs.