fieldtrip2

21 September 2011
• Mason village near Nainbagh bazaar, Tehri district • N30.5662; E78.0504, 1211m • On tarmac side road, 5km from main road passing through Nainbagh towards Yamnotri
 * 1 Village location**

• Three farmers at individual farm house next to road • Households in this village migrate during the year, living in houses near their fields during summer and moving to the central village in winter. • The three farmers come from different villages. We settled for the (sub?) village (Koti) of the farmer in whose house we were sitting.
 * 2 Interview setting**

• Total households: 30hh; 7hh <2ac (SC), 23hh>2ac; no landless • Livestock distribution, small farmers: 5 large ruminants (4hh); 10 small ruminants (2hh) • Large farmers: 100 local cattle, 50 buffalo (23hh); 100 goats (10hh) 20 sheep (5hh) • 5 years ago these hh were keeping 350 local cattle and 60 buffalo (reasons: children go to school, farm sizes have reduced because of splitting families) • Total cultivable private land: 350ac; 75% actually cultivated, rest is used for grass collection (probably previously used terraces) • Communal village land: 700ac, mainly grass, some trees • Village have access to reserved forest for collection of leaves (and grasses?)
 * 3 Village characterisation**

• Land rent: not available; 5 hh taking land on share basis (50%) • Land purchase: Rs 10000/ac (rainfed, terraced, two crops • Daily wage: 200-250Rs/d (NREGA 120Rs/d) • Manure: 0.50 Rs/kg (quality?) • Urea 6Rs/kg; DAP 11Rs/kg • Milk: 13Rs/l (but with considerable adulteration) • Concentrate is available in market (14Rs/kg?) but nobody uses it. • Wheat bran: 8Rs/kg (in Vikasnagar) • Livestock: Local cattle: 1500Rs; buff 30 000Rs (giving 5-6 l milk/d); bullock 9000Rs; goat 3000Rs • Paddy 7.5Rs/kg • Ragi (finger millet) 5.5Rs/kg • All crop residues (paddy, ragi) & dried grass: 250-300 Rs/160kg (4 backloads@40kg) • Credit interest rates: Bank 12%, subsidised bank credit: 4%; money lender 60%
 * 4 Some prices**

• Manure is important • But 50% of milk is sold (only started within last 5 years, before selling only ghee (was not possible to estimate how much milk was sold as ghee
 * 5 Livestock uses**

• Milk buyers in bazaar, milk federation, arrived 2 y ago; 4 local buyers, also come to home • 7-8 families are selling fodder out of village. Also some buying into village, but only occasionally • 15% hh have taken credit for buying livestock • Wheat bran (only purchased concentrate) in Vikasnagar (1.5h distance), visited every 2 months, also to buy salt
 * 6 Markets**

• Sources: 25% crop residues (paddy, wheat, fingermillet, maize ..), 25% private trees & grassland; 25% communal grassland; 25% forest land (seems a bit to equally distributed) • 3 hh feed home-made concentrates (1-2kg/d to lactating animals) based on soybean, maize, wheat, fingermillet, sorghum (varying by season) • Buffs are only fed by cut & carry • Cattle go out for grazing on communal lands (throughout the year) no herding anymore, but in monsoon they get taking to a pasture in another area; in winter (3 months) they also get dried grass (4kg/d). • All of the paddy straw is fed (they also have bhusa we later found out) • Residues are generally fed long only sometimes fed after cutting manually. • Feeding of wheat bran started 3 y ago when milk selling started. Heard from other farmers that it helps with milk yield.
 * 7 Livestock feeding**

• No cross-breds are being kept (low fodder quality, no concetrates), but AI has arrived 2-3y ago (from paravet) • Goat off-take rate: 20-30%
 * 8 Livestock intensification**

• No tractors • No threshers, cereals are threshed by driving animals over the harvested material • Electricity • Our farmer had installed drip irrigation for vegetables • Fodder choppers have been given to 15hh (at 25% subsidy) 4-5y ago by local NGO (GVK)
 * 9 Mechanisation, infrastructure**

• Extension contacts: visit to/by vet clinic 1/year – no information on feeding • Local NGO (Garawal Vikas Kendra) avg weekly • Previously watershed development programme (World Bank) was also active in the area; also had livestock activities: mangers, chaff cutters, cattle sheds, animal health camps
 * 10 Capacity, extension**

• Education: Adults male: 5y school, females 0y school, young male: 11y, female 8-10y) • Female labour: feeding 50%, milking 50%, grasscutting 70%, leaves cutting 70%, ploughing 0%, seeding 50%, weeding 50%, harvesting 50% • Livestock ownership: jointly, income decisions: jointly • Openness to change: Napier has successfully been introduced on bunds; hh moving to orchards (and vegetables?) • Any changes in feeding? No, but – 30%hh have changed something: e.g. mineral mixture, napier grass, chopper • Hh with mobiles: 100% (internet available in bazaar) • Group member ship: 1 group in village, 19 hh are members, mainly for savings
 * 11 Social indicators**

• Mason: biomass 3, quality 2, seasonality (winter) 1 • Lady: quality 1 • GVK representative: quality (in winter): 1
 * 12 Ranking of feed issues**

• Focusing on general indicators (wage to land, milk to concentrate etc) gave good idea on drivers and constraints (water was missed). • But farming system details were missing (cropping pattern, herd structure, feed composition, income sources). FEAST would have provided this information, but for stand-alone tool more of these systems characteristics should be included. • Quantifying contribution and management of common resources (e.g. grazing, grass/leaf collection) was difficult. More experience in asking efficient required. • Phrasing of questions has to validated (wheat bran was not reported initially because farmers understood "concentrates" as compound feed only. • More insight into labour and decision structures would be useful (e.g. who would decide on improving grass productivity on abandoned terraces). • Ranking of feed issues did not give conclusive results; it appeared that the concept of constraining issues is too abstract. But the ranking could be derived from the quantitative results: share of crop residues in feed indicates nutrient density, length of shortage period indicates whether biomass scarcity or seasonality are more serious constraints.
 * 13 Some reflections (Nils, 27/09/2011)**