1. Strengthening Food Security in Tribal Areas
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture
Tribal's symbiotic relationship with forests.
Forests provided food, fodder and fuel.
Natural and customary rights of tribal's.
Ecological degradation with newer crops/practices

2. Forest management: Historical Changes
• Free access to forest resources: Except
patches for royal hunting.
• No intervention by the state.
• Changing times; relationship between forest &
forest communities: institutionalized through
various cultural & religious mechanisms.
• Encouraged restraint & cautioning in using
forest as a resource base.

3. Forest management in British India
• 1865: First Indian Forest Act passed by Supreme Legislative
Council.
• Declaring forests and wastelands as reserved forests.
• 1878: Act was further strengthened by Forest Act.
• Empowered state FD to close reserve forests to people and
impose penalties for any transgression of the act.
• “rights” became “privileges” over night.
• Forest Act 1927 further denied any customary right of
forest communities over forests.
• Served imperial interests
• Denied minimum subsistence needs of forest communities.

4. Forest Policies after Indian Independence
• 1952:National Forest Policy.
• Retained fundamental orientation of colonial
forest policies.
• State monopoly over rights.
• Over the decades: spate of legislations have come
up geared towards conservation of forests and
wild life in India.
• The Wildlife Protection Act : 1972.
• The Forest Conservation Act of 1980 &
subsequent amendments.

5. Forest Act & Its Impact on Tribal Communities
• Moral conflict: Tribal's Customary Rights &
Commercially Oriented Forest Policies.
• Food security in tribal areas: hunting, gathering,
foraging, shifting cultivation, settled agriculture.
• Supplemented their primary means of
subsistence by collecting NTFP.
• State’s increasing control over forests.
• Deprived of their livelihood
• Undermining their customary relationship with
forests.

6. Development Imperatives
• Forest resources: acquired commodity value at the expense of
their subsistence value to forest communities.
• Accelerating food in-security in tribal areas.
• Needs of forest communities were cornered.
• Clash: Commercialization and Centralization of forest
resources with subsistence needs of forest communities and
Commercial Agriculture making in roads
• Farm based occupations account for nearly 55% of their needs
primary source of income.
• Reasons for weakening of food security in tribal areas
– land alienation, deforestation, decline in livestock, actual
wages, work availability , development projects and
conservation of forests and wild life.

7. • Extensive deforestation, climatic variations, change in
traditional economy impacting their food security
issues.
• Deprivation to land, water, food and natural resources.
• There is a constant struggle for their survival.
• Unable to get sufficient food and nutritious food.
– conditions of semi-starvation.
– hunger continues to persist on mass scale and is assuming
dehumanizing proportions.
– food security to be build on ecological security.
• Food security is an important means to realize their
right to food.
• Migration has become as an alternative

8. Hill & Tribal Agriculture in AP
• Andhra Pradesh has 50.24 lakhs tribal population
which constitutes 6.59% of state’s population of 762.10
lakhs (census 2001)
• Tribal areas are characterized by their fragile
ecosystem. These areas are home for various brooks,
streams, medicinal plants and other living forms
• Agriculture though main activity is not supporting fully
their livelihoods. Hence they depend on seasonal
fruits, NTFP and labour for their livelihood.
• Any intervention in these areas will have a larger
impact on the ecosystem as the interactions much
more compared to the plain lands

9. In Araku Valley area
• High rainfall areas
• Stream bed paddy cultivation
• Small holdings and distributed holdings
• Low yields
• 2 – 3 months hunger period
• 2 months fodder deficit
• Pesticide is not a major problem
• Seed is not a major problem

10. Soil productivity Management
• Soil is understood as strata to hold plants
• Plants as nutrient mining systems
• Only available nutrients are measured
• External nutrient application-no measure of
utilisation
• Soil-chemical, biological and physical properties
• Biomass application is also seen as external nutrient
application…so measures only the content

11. What we did
• Ranginavalasa, Jamiguda, Gowli, Billaput,
Bejumaravalasa, Amalaguda, Dodavalasa,
Godasarla and Pamurai
• “Gobor Porbo”: a festival of manure
• “Dongor Porbo”: hill festival
• Locally suitable crops and practices
– SRI in paddy
– Millets

12. Gobor Porob and Dongor Porob
 Seasonal biomass for composting
 Taking the cultural route – Gobor porob – during Sept-Oct months
 4mx2mx1.5m size heaps.
 Though the festival was done in one day it took almost 3 days to
complete
 About 1 ton compost from heap was harvested. This is in addition to
their traditional pit compost/manure
 Initially trees, weeds were used later bund plantation with gliricidia was
done
 800 heaps in total were made in about 50 villages/hamlets
 Incentive was community lunch
 Green manures
 Jeevamrit
 Mixed cropping

13. Gobor porob

14. Leaves of various trees
• Raavi • Gurumanu
• Maavidi • Gumpena
• Sikkini • Taadi
• Kasavinda • Boosi
• Tagaranchi • Jilledu
• Saema • Datthon
• Kumbi • Karvepaaku
• Madi • Panasa
• Sirimanu • Paalu
• Rella • Kaanuga
• Karaka • Germany (communist)
• Pittarodda • Vegisa
• Dolla(Jatropha) • Marri

15. Gobor porob

16. If cutting goes on????
• plantation needed and weeds to be allowed
for seeding
• Hill planting with available seeds (tamarind,
jack, mango etc) and planting material –
Dongor porob
• Nurseries – biomass/fodder trees were
included, minor forest produce (adda leaf
plants)
• Done with onset of monsoons

17. Dongor porob

18. Road Map
 Implement schemes affirmatively
 Work towards concerted efforts to boost agriculture
production protecting the fragile ecosystems
 Provide market interventions at income and price
stabilization levels
 Improve access to PDS & IGP (off farm and non farm)
• strategy required is to promote redistribution of
wealth, rights of ownership to forest produce, land
reforms and decent labour rates.
• Protect them from market vagaries.