Transforming Rural Farm Livelihoods : The NRLM Journey
The agriculture sector is the largest employer in India, providing direct employment to more than fifty percent of the nation’s workforce. Small and marginal farmers with landholdings of less than two hectares comprise eighty-six percent of all agr...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/637531590663036212/Transforming-Rural-Farm-Livelihoods-The-NRLM-Journey http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34726 |
| Summary: | The agriculture sector is the largest
employer in India, providing direct employment to more than
fifty percent of the nation’s workforce. Small and marginal
farmers with landholdings of less than two hectares comprise
eighty-six percent of all agricultural labour, reflecting
high land fragmentation and low economies of scale.
Mainstream extension and agriculture support services are
not customized for these farmer segments, limiting their
capacity to access improved production inputs and
technology. The situation is even more complicated for women
farmers who constitute nearly forty-three percent of India’s
agricultural labour force. The DAY-NRLM farm livelihoods
strategy evolved against this background to leverage the
program’s social infrastructure of sixty-eight million
households mobilized into exclusively women based self healp
groups (SHGs) and higher federations, in order to deliver
intensive and targeted capacity building of small farmers
and streamline access to credit for farm needs. Key
sub-sectors under the DAY-NRLM farm livelihoods portfolio
include agriculture, livestock and non-timber Forest Produce
(NTFP), supported through a combination of programs
including the Mahila kisan sashaktikaran pariyojna (MKSP),
National rural livelihoods project (NRLP) and Sustainable
livelihoods and adaptation to climate change (SLACC). The
farm livelihoods strategy under DAY-NRLM has evolved over
the years from its initial focus on enhancing productivity
through improved inputs and production methods, to a suite
of interventions that address multiple entry points in the
agriculture value chain. |
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