The variety of programmes and services offered by the Jajarkot Permaculture Programme (JPP) continues to invite local participation from the villagers not only in Jajarkot, but in Surkhet and Banke districts also. People are realising what can be done when investments are made into local resources and when new but appropriate techniques are brought in from the outside.

Trainings are regularly performed at the Resource Centres and in situ at village sites. The Parima system (see above) is showing signs of success and a wide application. Trainees, including JPP staff, are able to view demonstrations now producing viable benefits on the earlier farms, such as fuel/fodder plantations (farms #1 and #2), fruit production, beekeeping, weaving, green manure cultivation, alley cropping, vegetable production (and associated systems of mulching, companion planting and waste water management, for example) and pit latrines. In addition, visiting farmers can train in these systems’ establishment and maintenance. Finally, resources of seed and seedling can be taken back to villagers’ homes where JPP staff can continue to oversee progress.

It took the JPP seven years to reach the point where members felt

 they had the experience to pass on worthwhile information where it is needed. Much of this “passing on” is done by the visual demonstrations on the RCs, and also by local farmers, who are themselves implementing designs and thus further refining the design process. They are able to say how the original property was, what strategies they are employing to improve it, and which they see as the most important and successful methods to do this.

Evaluation of Gumi’s NFE programme found one family who had successfully tried, adapted and is now regularly using eight new technologies on their half acre of land. These are: green manures, waste recycling, compost making, improved stove, kitchen garden, liquid manure, home nursery and agro-forestry on terrace edges.

When Institutions teach what farmers practice, it is a rare event indeed. This is part of a mind-block in education policy (“sustainable” or otherwise) worldwide. Yet it illustrates a crucial learning cycle where by the Institute (in this case the JPP), having provided a range of technologies and issues to investigate, then (re-) learns back how the farmers are establishing and maintaining these technologies and systems. This ensures that technologies are appropriate and thus can spread easily throughout farmers’ networks (or whoever the users are).

The JPP operates hand in hand with local cultural activities. This is because the Programme recognises the value of indigenous wisdom and the cultural background that it has been based upon. It is therefore important that villagers associate the Programme activities with their own value systems. One way to ensured this is by participating in and supporting local cultural events, and organising those specific to Grihasthashram. In this way, a large number of villagers are brought into contact with the Programme within their traditional value systems, in this case in a festival situation. This can lead them to active involvement in the Programme. The JPP has organised its own Spring festival, the Grihasthashram mela, for six years running in the villages of Samaila, Khurpa, and Panchkatya in Jajarkot, and for three years on the Nepali New Year in Gumi, Surkhet.

Losing Traditions......

Cultural traditions are more rare in Surkhet than in Jajarkot, the area being more developed in terms of access to roads, electricity and the market economy. Farming practices use more external resources - fertilisers, pesticides, seed, etc., and have suffered greatly from low rainfall, drying springs, increased pest attack and decreasing fertility. As old, low external input systems are left behind, so often are the cultures such as traditional song and dance. People at the Gumi mela were openly astonished and excited by the dances, and the JPP capitalised on this interest, taking the opportunity to give out its newsletters and technical bulletins.

...... but not with festivals

The JPP’s philosophy is that culture, farming, economy and environment are inexorably connected, and imbalancing or losing one means weakening of the others. It thus strives to demonstrate that all three can be mutually strengthened with a mix of local resources, new, appropriate technologies and an emphasis on traditional wisdom. The latter of course has to include the skills of dance, song and story telling, and therefore the melas. When asked, the mela throng insisted that the JPP regularly hold the festival on that day. Thus the calender is set for many years to come.

“You thought you had all the answers, thought you could solve all the problems of the world. You didn’t need us, so you set us up on reservations where we could be kept quiet. And now, suddenly, you realize that maybe we had a few good ideas, that maybe we were on to something in the way we thought about nature. And you come searching us out, asking, “What was it you said about the Earth? What exactly are your religious beliefs?” And we say, “We don’t know. We’re all Baptists now.”

Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondage Nation of the Iroquois.

Farmers’ first priority is fulfil their basic needs. If this is not done, no matter how “appropriate” or effective the idea, new technologies will not be accepted if only because there is no time or other resources to apply them. In the Jajarkot village of Pipe, farmers were motivated to start planting fodder grasses and trees (produced in a local JPP nursery) on terrace edges as a result of a small irrigation pipe provided at a cost of just NRs 3600/-, yet allowing irrigation of some fourty hectares of land, increasing staple food production. But irrigation is not the end of the JPP’s work in Pipe. On the contrary, it has been another entry point through which all members of the community have benefitted from. Work had started on one interested farmer’s land eighteen months ago, and now forty households are taking up elements of the JPP’s resource base. Villagers in Pipe now make their own beehives, cloth, growing cotton, and are planting fodder grasses, fruit and multi-purpose trees.

There are two key issues involved here. One is the concept of entry point - finding a connection with a community which can meet short term basic needs while opening opportunities for long term and sustainable benefits. The second is to ensure that all members of the community have equal access to the benefits available. There is an all too common experience in development programmes worldwide of elite members of the community trying to grab the benefits of the project for themselves while withholding valuable information and other resources from the poorer sectors who often have a weaker voice. These are the people even less able to take up new technologies and acquire project benefits, but most needing it.

The JPP has, in its experience, developed several ways of dealing with these issues. The provision of drinking water systems is an immediate investment into the community which everyone cannot fail to benefit from. In Bhatanpur (Nepalganj), the acquirement of rice from local farmers and direct marketing to farmers in Gumi (see report, May 1994) produced a high level of participation which only the JPP’s budget limits have been unable to capitalise on and repeat this year. However, if there is an issue of village life to deal with, which will ensure 100% participation, it is the acquisition of salt.

Salt is one of the few commodities which since time immemorial villagers have relied on from the outside. Previously from Tibet and more recently from India, salt is a necessity for people and livestock alike. Each household (average eight persons, four large livestock) may consume up to 100kg per year. Members from every household without exception will make an annual trip to wherever salt is available. In Jajarkot, this involves several days walk to the nearest salt trading depot. Villagers often take local currency such as chillies, amaranth and ghiu to trade. In October and November the JPP consulted its allied committees (GVCs) in Jajarkot and found that salt and its procurement was paramount in the minds of villagers at that time, as villagers en masse prepared to make the long trek South. The JPP agreed to assist, and in early December acquired seven tonnes of salt from Nepalganj and trucked it to the road head at Sital Pati, two days’ walk (without a load) from the Jajarkot border. On hearing of these plans, hundreds of villagers from JPP working areas said they would trade with the “Jajarkot Depot” (as it has become known). The salt was traded for whatever currency the villagers brought.

Some 260 villagers came from twenty six villages to trade for the salt. The trade raised 260kg soya beans, 66kg ghui, 28kg amaranth, 18kg beans, 10kg buckwheat and NRs 17,666/- cash (cost of the operation was 22,700/-). This was brought to Kathmandu and stored at Sita Paila RC until prices rise, when it will be marketed. Profits from this will be ploughed back into revolving funds which JPP-aligned GVCs have set up (see below) to invest in local developement projects run by the communities themselves. Thus the cycle is complete, with a system that ensures contact with every household in the JPP and its aligned working areas. It is not only self- sustaining, but also produces a profit which is reinvested into the communities. Although budgets only allowed for one truck of salt, this is a trial, and based on results the programme can be expanded next year.

The process of development is a long one, whereby one hopes that constant evaluation of progress adapts techniques and approach to optimise its efficiency. This does not mean maximising the “speed” of development, as there are too many examples of projects that have left more harm than good in the wake of high input technology and short term benefits which largely ignore traditional practices, are of too large a scale, and often only pursue monoculture goals. Rather, the effect left behind the “sharp end” of development activities should be an infrastructure of improved local resources - skills, environment and economy - which the local people can build upon in a self determined way. In the JPP’s case, the “sharp end” activities are training and skills development, social work and motivation through participation. An appropriate “tool box” of technology based on local needs is then implemented by working within local traditions and cultural activities and beliefs, such as festivals, labour exchange practices, and a language based on the vedic scripts (a Hindi/Sanskrit translation of “Permaculture” is “Grihasthashram”).”The results of developing such an approach is evident, with high participation in the Programme by villagers across a range of ethnic and social groups.

After eight years of development, the criteria for success of a community-centred development programme are becoming apparent. Many such criteria have been identified through trial and error, here in Jajarkot as well as in development programmes elsewhere in the world. These criteria can be regarded as strategies to facilitate the spread of awareness and practice of sustainable livelihoods. They can be summarised, from experience with the JPP, as:

- approach being needs-based (needs of the land and the people)

- technology based on (and with respect to) the principles of ecology

- technology should make maximum use of natural, and especially local, resources

- new technology should be easy to do (not needing high extra inputs of time, labour, etc.)

- technology should be cheap

- activities should be something all the family can do

- work should provide quick benefits to initiate motivation

- build on success; learn from mistakes

- scale of programme should remain small and intimate

- activities are linked with traditional beliefs

- using local examples/models

- activities should create interest, enthusiasm and participation

- new technologies should be risk free/minimum risk (or that risk be subsidised)

- individuals’ characters and personalities should be recognised and accepted; work responsibilities are given accordingly

- there should be a feedback system to evaluate progress in meeting aims/objectives

The technology and approach taken by the JPP has created access into villages and local culture based on trust, belief and understanding through the application of the above criteria. Thus “entry points” to initiate development activities can lead to further diversification of activities, and thus increase of benefits. Sustainable levels of production of basic needs lead to a strengthening of local economies and thus opportunities to further increase wealth. Finally, as there are increasing amounts of resources produced locally to support JPP (seed, seedlings, beehives, skills, etc.), so an increasing proportion of the costs of running the programme become met by the programme.

“Observing the work of the JPP, I was excited as much by the sense of dynamism and growth within the people associated with the project as I was by the dramatic changes that were occuring on the land.”