Based on its experiences in promoting ‘flood safe’ agriculture packages under its DRR interventions, GDS evolved the methodology for undertaking large scale agriculture and NR based livelihoods promotion. The critical lesson that GDS learned was that GDS believes that all agro-climatic contexts have unique characteristics, in terms of issues, problems and limitations and also as far as their resources base, capacities and opportunity profiles are concerned. Hence, they require contextualised and tailor-made intervention strategies.

Based on the above assumption, the strategic approach of GDS for agriculture and NR based livelihoods development involves the following-     

  • Building a context/micro-context level understanding of the specific issues and problems facing agriculture, along with the existing capacities, knowledge base and coping practices of the farmers;  using a participatory approach   
  • Finding innovative technical/technological solutions to the critical issues and problems and developing around them ‘improved’ context specific packages of agricultural technologies, techniques and package of practices (PoPs) that are environmentally sustainable, and practical and convenient to use by the farmers (the technologies may be sourced from agriculture universities, research institutions, etc.)
  • The ‘packages’ thus devised are tested in the field with a small set of farmers; and, the successful packages or the technologies/practices are then propagated for wider application in the project area and even beyond
  • Another key strategy that GDS applies is to promote livelihoods based community institutions of the targeted households, both at primary level  (SHG, Farmers’ Club) and at secondary level (Federation & Producer Organizations of farmers), for pooling of resources, mutual help and towards ensuring the stability and sustainability of the impact.

The agriculture development interventions of GDS are located in some of the backward and poor regions of the country, viz., North-Eastern UP, Northern Bihar, Southern UP (the Bundelkhand area) and Central Rajasthan. Based on climatic considerations, these regions could be divided into two major categories-

  1. Regions that receive good rainfall and are flood prone (North-Eastern & Central UP; and Northern Bihar)
  2. Areas that are semi-arid/arid, receive moderate to low/very low rainfall and often suffer from drought like situations (Southern UP/Bundelkhand and Central Rajasthan)

As could be obvious, the agro-ecological characteristics and also the problem faced by agriculture in these two categories of regions are quite different. While the regions with good rainfall and flood problem are characterised by good quality alluvial soils, plentiful ground and surface water resources, consistently declining soil health, high population density and very small operational land holdings; the water deficient and drought prone regions are characterised by poorly formed soils, thin layers of soil with rocky substratum underneath, undulating terrains, relatively larger operational holdings and low cropping intensity.  

While the overall focus of GDS’s interventions in these regions is on enhancing production and productivity, reducing cost of cultivation and mitigating the risks to agriculture; the specific design of projects  are built around strategies to counter the key problems that the farmers in these regions face. For example, in the flood prone/plentiful water regions, the strategies include introducing such technologies and practices that enhance flood and submergence tolerance of crops, reduce cost of cultivation, check the decline in soil health and enhance cropping intensity. In the water deficient/drought prone regions, the projects focus at promoting technologies and practices that help enhance the ability of crops to stand water deficiency, quality of soil and water/ moisture conservation capacity.

Beginning from 2007, agriculture and NR based livelihoods development interventions have emerged as the prime component of GDS’s programmes. Implemented through a series of projects and interventions, the benefits of GDS’s agriculture development endeavours reached to over 22,000 farmers from the floodplains/low productivity regions of Eastern and Central UP (Maharajganj, Siddarthnagar, Balrampur, Shravasti, Bahraich and Hardoi Districts); and approximately 5,000 farmers from the water deficient areas of Lalitpur (Southern UP) and Ajmer (Central Rajasthan) Districts. Another component of NR based livelihoods interventions has been livestock-based livelihoods promotion. Under this, GDS’s focus has been on both, the small ruminants (goat, at the Lalitpur and Jawaja location) as well as large ruminants (at the Maharajganj location). A unique feature of this component has been promotion of community-based systems for livestock healthcare and breed improvement management. Under this GDS has promoted cadres of paravets, for large ruminants, and Pashu Sakhis, for goat-based livelihoods promotion. The community-based service delivery systems promoted under these interventions now reach over 8,000 livestock rearing households from Maharajganj, Lalitpur and Ajmer Districts.