The livelihoods of rural and tribal population of Rayagada greatly affected due to the lockdown combating COVID-19 Pandemic. Their livelihoods primarily revolve around agricultural practices and daily labour works. Though the government has permitted for agriculture and MGNREGS works in later stage of lockdown, but getting agricultural input support was a challenge. Meantime, the MGNREGS works got affected due to monsoon break.

In order to give some respite to the poor tribals, the Child Development Project team of CYSD, in consultation with the community people, proposed to the Block and District Administration for promotion of individual vegetable cultivation projects, in the form of nutrition garden model, under MGNREGS. The District Administration had agreed with the proposal and advised Project Team to extend required support to the Kolnara Block Administration in mobilising the community. As per the proposed model, each beneficiary was suggested to get 34 man-days for land development and fencing of garden area measuring 1200 sqft.

In order to carry forward the proposed Nutrition Garden project works, community meetings were conducted in each village of the outreach areas for collection of individual applications, making the job demand under MGNREGS and dissemination of input support. In this Khariff season, the Project could mobilise and able to technically support around 540 households under 5 panchayats of Kolnara block for the vegetable cultivation in Nutrition garden model and linked with MGNREGS for generating wages.

After completion of land preparation, getting required quantity of vegetable seeds was a big challenge. Whatever vegetable seeds was supplied by the Odisha Livelihoods Mission (OLM) to the beneficiaries, that was not adequate to cover the entire garden area. So, the Project Team approached to the Deputy Director of Horticulture, Rayagada to provision seeds for the left out beneficiaries. Considering the gamut of situation, the Deputy Director, Horticulture was agreed and supplied vegetables seeds in mini kit (13 varieties of vegetable seeds) for distribution to the remaining beneficiaries of the Project area.

“Indeed, this agriculture input support ‘vegetable seeds’ is a great help for us to meet the vegetable requirements of our family as well as to fulfil the nutritional deficiencies and sell the surplus ones to procure allied household items”, says Suba Kantabansa, a successful vegetable grower from Gouda Lelibadi village.  “We are really thankful to CYSD Team for restoring our livelihoods and supporting timely to get out of this pandemic burden”, added delighted Suba.

 In the upcoming Ravi season, the Project has target of supporting 1000 households for vegetable cultivation under Nutrition Garden Model.