Farmer collectives film shortlisted for 'Quotes from the Earth' film festival
Photo: Nabin Baral/IWMI.
The film 'Farmer Collectives in North Bengal' has been shortlisted to be showcased in the environmental film festival called Quotes from the Earth, organized by Toxics Link and the India International Centre (IIC) with the support of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Friends Foundation International.
'Farmer Collectives in North Bengal' is a documentary that focuses on the West Bengal collectives. It probes the benefits the farmers have reaped as well as the challenges they continue to face in terms of labor sharing and marketing, especially under the twin shadows of the pandemic and climate change.
The film will be screened on December 2 2022 at the India International Centre, New Delhi.
In South Asia, more than 80 percent of farmers cultivate two hectares or less. Most farms are technically constrained and economically non-viable. As a novel experiment, between 2015-2019, a set of farmer collectives were piloted by a consortium of non-government organizations and research partners in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, to see if this could help marginal and small farmers overcome their constraints in a region with exploitative landlord-tenant relations and poor irrigation access.
This participatory action research project entailed the formation of collectives of four to ten farmers (of varying gender composition), each cultivating contiguous plots and collaborating in land management, production and marketing in varying degrees. The project provided irrigation through electric and solar boreholes, but twinning this with a collective approach to create a large contiguous plot was critical to make the irrigation practical and efficient. This approach enabled resource-poor farmers to farm all year round. All the groups reported higher crop yields, and tenant farmers gained more bargaining power with landlords.
The collectives were implemented by the Centre for the Development of Human Initiatives (CDHI), with support from the University of Southern Queensland, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the University of Birmingham and North Bengal Agricultural University (UBKV) as part of the ACIAR-funded project Improving Dry Season Irrigation for Marginal and Tenant Farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (DSI4MTF). The documentary was realized with support from the CGIAR GENDER Impact Platform.
Attend the screening: Quotes from the Earth Film Festival.
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