Farming is perhaps the most under rated profession today. This is a job that was once the backbone of our economy. But the culture is fast dying as there don't seem to be many takers for this job. Most people prefer to work from the comfort of an office environment. For example, just look at this job requirement ad that might be put up if ever farmers hire people in a corporate style.
Centre For Sustainable Agriculture, CSA is a non-profit organisation that has been working for the upliftment of farmers across several states for years now. Their one crore fund raising campaign that was started on a crowd funding website has collected lakhs of rupees so far. Here is a brief of what they plan to do with that one crore.
Where and how would this money be used?
1) To establish farmer helplines - The below chart was prepared by Rythu Swarajya Vedika (ground partners of CSA). The idea is to establish similar helplines in other areas.
2) To help form farmer cooperatives
3) To help farm field schools
4) To help create Farmer Producer organizations
5) To ear mark 30-40% of the funds raised for helping farmers in distress
6) To invest in programs, campaigns to reach out to farmers to help educate and organize them to adopt non pesticide management and organic/natural farming
CSA has a solid network of volunteers, NGOs on the ground across the different states in India and through them the intention is to reach out to the farmers, identify those in distress and proactively offer help. Such an intervention will allow us to avoid the situations that push the farmers into a further deepening crisis. The focus will be in the states of Andhra, Telangana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu.
So can you please join in this effort 1) Donate just $10 or Rs 1000 2) Donate $20 or Rs 2000 3) Get at least 10 of your friends to do the same and set a personal goal of Rs 20,000 4) Take personal responsibility to see that we reach the goal of 1 crore
