by Chris Evans
Permaculture Designer and Teacher,
Technical Advisor to the JPP

In Nepal, 91-93% of the working population is dependent primarily on agriculture for their livelihood. Agricultural practices have developed to be finely in tune with local climate, landscape and people’s needs. Such practices are intimately interwoven with the forest and other natural resources to maintain the balance of nutrients necessary to support agriculture and thus provide basic needs of food, fuel, fodder, timber, medicines, etc. Nationalisation of the forests, rising population and inappropriate aid programmes have combined to undermine the sustainability of traditional agriculture in a number of ways. Clearance of forest land for farming in an attempt to increase crop yields has led to degradation of the very resources needed to support agriculture, and thus culture itself. The people of Nepal are now faced with the need to integrate forestry with agriculture in order to supply the resources they need for farming and other basic needs.

In Nepal, and Jajarkot is no exception, political and social effects of the move towards a market-orientated economy are combined with corruption from both the oppressive regimes of past decades and from the present inappropriate and unethical aid policies which promote high external input activities. The result is a disempowered people with unequitable access to not only basic needs but also the very products of the market economy - consumerables and luxury goods - which people assume to be without is a sign of poverty.

The Jajarkot Permaculture Programme (JPP) is a small, local organisation in mid-west Nepal, which has developed demonstration sites to show how sustainable agriculture can be practiced when correct design of farms and social programmes is implemented. Integration of trees, use of all areas of farm land, improvement and utilisation of common property resources, and using techniques of low external input sustainable agriculture (LEISA) provide the resources needed to increase crop yields without clearance of new land.

The JPP is involved in training programmes for fruit and vegetable production, beekeeping, weaving, LEISA techniques and other disciplines such as drinking water systems. This is producing a diverse skills base, and the JPP is further identifying and utilizing traditional farming, labour and product exchange systems to apply its work. Further, in order to strengthen the local economy, marketing of farmers’ products is recycling wealth back into the villages.

The JPP’s results to date are so encouraging that part of its work is to apply and teach models of sustainable developement, including sustainable agriculture and permaculture, on a national and even international scale.

Below are details of JPP’s social and technical approach, with some examples of projects which have been successful. The reasons why such an approach is successful are summarised in the hope that other organisations can benefit in their own work from the lessons the JPP has learned.

Sociological surveys of farming systems and labour exchange practices in Jajarkot have revealed an intricate “web” of relationships between the farming, natural resource, social and market levels of production. While it is not the purpose of this report to detail them, the conclusions are that there exist highly appropriate and traditional systems of agriculture, technology, labour and product exchange, and general social organisation, yet these are at risk from degrading natural resources and inapropriate development which pays little heed to traditional systems and culture. JPP’s methodology has approached this in 2 ways. The first is by being itself a practitioner of traditional farming systems with small but significant changes to utilise more fully free natural resources (rolling permaculture). The second way is to use traditional methods in extension and outreach in order to facilitate understanding and acceptance of improved techniques to as many people as possible.

An example is a system of labour and product exchange called “adhiya” (from Nepali “adha” meaning “half”). This involves a landless tenant and an absentee landlord, whereby the tenant farms the land and receives half of the crop, plus the next year’s seed requirement. JPP has recently made adhiya contracts with 2 local farmers, and thus has access to land in order to demonstrate rolling permaculture, achieved with immediate acceptance and trust by the landowners. In a second example, the adhiya system has been applied to establishing a fruit plantation integrated with fodder trees and grasses, whereby JPP is using its resources of seed, seedlings and information to contract the species selection, establishment and management of the orchard. Fruit is valuable for nutrition, income generation, and as a low maintenance value production system. Permaculture gives emphasis on perennial forms of agriculture - ideally from trees - and so fruit production is an important system in design and therefor JPP’s programme. Use of the traditional adhiya system then provides the way to make “development” understandable and acceptable to the farmer by using a system that he/she already knows and trusts. There are many more examples of how improved techniques can be implemented using traditional systems such as adhiya , and the success and immediate acceptance of JPP and its programme means that JPP will concentrate on firstly identifying the appropriate system, and thereupon applying it in the development arena in Jajarkot.

JPP’s Technical Approach

Realising that highly appropriate traditional cropping systems

(TCS) exist indigenously in Jajarkot, research will continue to concentrate on finding niches in time and space in which enhancing systems such as green manures (rolling PC) can be added without affecting TCS yield. An example is planting mustard (a phosphate accumulator) or fenugreek (a nitrogen accumulator) into winter wheat shortly before harvesting the wheat in the spring. When the next crop (usually maize or rice) is about to be planted, the green manure is mulched or incorporated into the soil, and the nutrients it has accumulated will be available to the next crop. In a different approach, alfalfa (Lucerne - Medicago sativa ) can be planted into millet shortly before harvesting in situations where the land will be left fallow for one or two years. Millet is a heavy feeeder and farmers recognise the need for land to recover when organic compost is in short supply and there is not a need to grow crops on the land while it is in fallow. By planting alfalfa, the soil-improving legume will fix nitrogen and provide a cut fodder yield, and may even enable the farmer to shorten the fallow period required for the millet land. Such approaches are on trial at a number of sites in Jajarkot, and using the adhiya approach (see above) has greatly facilitated this.

Plantation Technique - an example of technology approach.

JPP’s methodology in establishing community and large scale private plantations emphasizes use of traditional systems such as sahayog (meaning literally “cooperation” - given voluntarily) and baure whereby labour is paid by providing food and/or alcohol at the end of the day. JPP also uses design whereby mixed plantations contain species placed according to their growth habits as compared to the natural succession patterns of forest from bare land. Natural succession follows a pattern from ground layer shrubs, through “pioneer”-type small trees on to climax forest. Design uses this pattern to include useful species for products and for land rehabilitation which will occur at each stage of succession but established at the same time. In this way, “climax”-type species such as walnut, chestnut, soapnut (Sapindus nepaulensis), carob (Ceratonia siliqua), mango, jackfruit and neem (Azardirachta indica) are planted at a distance corresponding to their mature size - usually 10-12 metres. They can then be interplanted at 5m spacings with smaller trees (which will also mature sooner) such as apple, peach, apricot, almond, citrus, tree cotton etc. This pattern can be further interplanted at 1.0-2.5m spacings with smaller, faster maturing trees such as Acacia spp., Lucaena, Bauhinia, mullberry, black locust (Robinia), and bead tree (Melia azadirach, known locally as “bakaino”) for fodder, fuelwood, small construction poles and other products. These closely planted, smaller trees can be cut and/or coppiced to keep them from competing with the climax and mid-term trees. Banana and Papaya can also be included in this “small tree” group. An emphasis here will be given to legume trees as the intercrop in order to provide an underground net of nitrogen-fixing and soil improving root systems to benefit the establishing food forests as a whole. Finally, legume and other grasses can be grown on the ground. In this way, maximum use of the available area can be ensured, and also that a variety of product benefits accrue from a very early stage.

On steep slopes this design is further modified to give a closer planting between trees on contours, such as 0.75m-1.0m between trees on the contour and 2.0-2.5m at right angles to the contour. This will enable space to grow shade tolerant ground crops such as coffee, cardammon, ginger and tumeric as well as fodder grasses such as alfalfa and ryegrass in between the rows of trees on contours. Where private distribution is the aim, farmers are advised on such planting designs, and have the demonstrations at existing plantation sites to view.

DRINKING WATER SYSTEMS - an example of appropriate technology application.

An integrated drinking water system was built in January 1991 for the village of Sirpachaur, one day’s walk north of Samaila. The programme used traditional methods of spring water collection and supply plastic pipe to carry the water to six tap stands in the village. Villagers agreed to provide land around and below the each tap stand for use of grey (waste) water irrigation in a kitchen garden programme. The programme includes building up to 30 pit latrines. JPP was approached after 9 persons in 2 households died suddenly in a cholera outbreak in May 1990.

The drinking water system continued to work well. Work was started by the government and private contractors on a larger scheme to feed 6 villages using a major spring above Sirpachaur. When the contractors came to construct the first collection tank at the spring, women from Sirpachaur tore it down because of fear that the water supply to the river running through valley would be reduced, thus disabling some 14 flour mills of the village. A substantial amount of bribes were paid to a certain village headman, and a new tank was built. There was a JPP tap next to this man’s house, and he removed the tap to build a cement tap stand.

Before pipe was laid for this system, a large trench had been dug from the source spring, above the village, heading down slope towards other villages. This was dug during the monsoon, but not refilled. Villagers of Sirpachaur estimate that the erosion caused by the trench filling with water and washing away soil lost up to 2000kg of maize production.

The HMG planned system shows all the characteristics of a programme motivated by political gain, and which is too large for villagers to build and maintain themselves. The villagers of upper-Sirpachaur (Pun-gaun) have refused permission to build cement tap stands or bring the water from the large system, because the JPP-built system satisfies their needs. In lower-Sirpachaur (Gharti-gaun) only 2 cement stands have been built, neither of which are working six years later.

The drinking water system constructed by the JPP at Sirpachaur continues to work well, six years after its construction. Some minor repairs have been needed and one of the significant results of using local materials and skills to construct the system is that repairs and improvements can be made by the villagers themselves without external inputs. This has been an important factor in raising the level of motivation and self esteem to go on and develope other activities, such as beekeeping, fruit and vegetable production, and forest management in Sirpachaur, and is proving a model for other areas. The villagers are also managing kitchen gardens as a result of JPP activities.

Meeting Single Needs

This demonstrates an important approach in the development process, that of only looking to satisfy single (and appropriate) needs when projects start in new areas. With Sirpachaur, this was the drinking water project. Having concentrated and succeeded in this, and gaining the villagers trust and motivation, it becomes easier to introduce further components of a more integrated system - in this case beekeeping and weaving. Because resources for such technological developments can now be supplied locally by the JPP (timber, skills, cotton, etc.), this also makes them much more acceptable to villagers.

Another success story....

Beekeeping

The JPP’s beekeeping programme continues to be its most successful in terms of income generation and also to give an “entry point” to new villages in order to initiate its programmes. A shining example of this is the village of Kalpat, which started its beekeeping programme in 1991 by acquiring improved hives and training in their management. By the end of 1991, the village produced some 250kg of prime Autumn (Chiuri) honey. This was marketed by the JPP and a village development fund started with the profits. The villagers formed their own management committee, and by the end of the 1992 season the village had produced a staggering 1500 kg (3300lbs). The committee also pooled honey production from nearby villages to make a total of 2200kg (4840lbs) which was marketed by the JPP, and profits returned to the programme. The profits from this venture in 1992-3 totalled some NRs 90,000/- of which 10,000/- went into the Kalpat village fund. The local Grihasthashram committee, made up of villagers from Kalpat, then decided for what development activities the funds will be used for. So far, they have funded a training course on beehive construction, purchaced fruit seedlings, and provided wages for a forest watcher. The committee also decided voluntarily to give a grant to support establishment of a JPP programme in the village of Khurpa. The remaining profits from the honey have been used in other areas of the JPP’s work in Jajarkot.

Such success has had many “side effects”. The villagers of Kalpat have started kitchen garden vegetable production, a Resource Centre, fruit and multi-purpose plantations, weaving programmes and a women’s forest protection and management committee. The latter is actively involved in preserving and enhancing local forest, which is the source of their honey production. Surrounding villages have requested similar programmes, and to implement these the villagers of Kalpat can provide locally all the resources needed, from hive construction to the development of other integrated projects which they themselves now have the skill and experience to initiate. In all, the Kalpat model is being taken up in 5 other village areas to which JPP staff do not even have to travel, thus saving time in their busy programme.

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