POTATO FARMING

Introduction

Self Sustaining campaign is an initiation by a group of 13 members including Mr. Ruskin Gautam as Chief executive Director, Mr. Bishwas Chepang as Managing Director, and 1 IT Technicians and 9 Chepang members headed by Mr. Rabilal Chepang to minimize the poverty and help the Chepang community in income generational activities and make them self sustained in their life. Self Sustaining Campaign has a dream of making people from poor and marginalized background self sustained and live a life of normal standard. In addition to this Self-Sustaining Campaign focuses on dignified living by making them independent of others in society. The initiation of self-Sustaining campaign through Poultry farming is to provide immediate income generational activities in the community. The modality of this initiation is to generate incentives among the community. Secondly we have designed one Chepang Child Sponsorship program to educate Chepang Children’s.

Potato Farming is our third initiation as a part of Self Sustaining campaign so as to motivate and encourage them to work for themselves in income generational activities. Self-Sustaining campaign acts a guide and shows the direction to make them self sustained.

Background

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most important crops of Nepal. It is used as a major vegetable in Terai and mid-hills and as a staple food in the high hills and mountains. Due to its potentiality and wider adaptability to grow year round in the country, its importance is ever increasing.

Potato farming in the mid-hill regions of Chitwan Districts in Chepang Community is our third project as a part of Self Sustaining Campaign. Potatoes can grow in the lower mid hills of 1000-meter altitude, which can be used as cash crops as well as food crops by Chepang people. Potato can be grown at any time given that it needs proper irrigation and organic manure. So the potato will be grown planted at the end of January

Goal

·      To provide them a platform to work and earn for themselves.

·      To empower single women’s and the women’s whose husbands cannot earn through potato cultivation.

Objectives

• To identify and solve production constraints of seed and ware potatoes through on-station and farmer’s participatory multi-location on-farm research,
• To produce high quality healthy source seed of released/recommended potato varieties,
• To establish coordination with potato stakeholders in the local market,
• Develop and strengthen linkages market and Chepang people.

Methodology

Under this project the Community people will be given 30kg Potatoes each for household to cultivate and harvest them. The profit earned after harvesting them will be kept by themselves and they will be returning 30kg potatoes to our Village coordinating committees and the Self Sustaining Campaign will be cultivating them and we will use it for administrative expenses.

On third phase Women’s in Chepang community will be empowered by providing them job opportunities. Tentatively 15 women’s who lost their husbands and whose husbands cannot earn and work in the field or who are economically backward than others will be mobilized in this potato farming. The women’s will be paid on daily wage basis as per the rules and regulations widely followed in the society.

The accountability of the potatoes harvesting will be assessed and if that is found profitable then the potato farming will be conducted in large scale in Chepang village employing the local people by using locally available resources.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strength

·      Warm atmospheric condition that is actually required for the potato cultivation: (14-25 degree Celsius)

·      The lands are easily irrigable

Threats

·      Stony arid land

The lands will be ploughed and the stones will be removed and the compost manures of the chickens will be mixed making it fertile to cultivate potatoes in the agriculture land.

Phase 1

 Initially we will be distributing potatoes to the Chepang farmers who are interested to cultivate (20 kg each). They will grow up potatoes and they will take the profit earned and will return the 20kg potatoes that they have taken from us. We will be making memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for this.

Phase 2

Collect the potatoes 25 kg each from farmers. The returned potatoes will be collected by the program coordinator Mr. Moti Lal Chepang..

Phase 3:

Self Sustaining Campaign will be Cultivating Potatoes by empowering single women’s and womens whose husband is economically weak by providing them work on daily wage basis.

Timeline for the Potato Cultivation

Phase 1

Potato Farming / Activities

20-30 February

1-7 March

7-10 March

1-15 April

16-30 April

1-15 May

16-30 May

1-15 June

16-30 June

1-15 July

16-30 July

Remarks

Concept Development/ Planning ·      Budget Allocation ·      Call for Budgeting (Managing Director) ·      Contact National Agriculture Research Centre (NARC) 5540815 5550795 ·      Find suitable potato for cultivation in hilly area ·      Assign Village coordinating committee for the required management

Land Preparation ·      Ploughing ·      Pipe management ·      Water supply management ·      Composting

Cultivation ·      Fetch potato from the market ·      Cultivate

Monitoring/ Evaluation ·      Timely water supply ·      Compost management ·      Find market during this period ·      Take specialist if possible

Marketing ·      Sell in the market

Accounting

The estimated costs for the Potato cultivation

S.N.	PARTICULARS	Quantity	Rate	Amount	Remarks
1	Potato	400 kg		30,000
2	Transportation of Potatoes			3,000
3	Program Coordinator costs -       Recharge -       -snacks -       Go to the field -       Timely monitoring -       Evaluation -       Suggestion -			5,000
4	Miscellaneous costs			2,000
	Total			40,000