Hyderabad, July 9, 2020: NMDC has helped villagers to plant saplings of fruit-bearing trees after completing 50 trainings of about 650 tribal farmers from 25 villages in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh. Smt. Devati Karma, MLA – Dantewada, graced the Sapling Distribution and Training Programme at Aalnar village. She motivated farmers in their own language – Halvi – by giving examples of other farmers and her own, who are getting good income by selling fruits. Her talk was well received by the farmers. Smt. Devati Karma highly appreciated the efforts made by the CSR team of NMDC.
In an effort to alleviate the standard of living of the tribal communities by undertaking income generation/sustainable livelihood initiatives, NMDC has adopted a plethora of multi-pronged strategies. One among the many steps in this direction is the mission of planting 50,000 saplings of fruit-bearing trees in 25 villages (Benpal, Padapur, Pina Bacheli, Dugeli, Bade Kameli, Nerli, Bhansi, Dhurli, Gamawada, etc.) in collaboration with the District Administration of Dantewada.
The District Administration would provide 38,000 free saplings of fruit-bearing trees from the Horticulture Deptt., for supporting this endeavour of NMDC, and rest of the saplings are being procured by NMDC, Bacheli from its CSR funds. The District Collector, CEO – Zilla Panchayat and Joint Collector of the district are supporting the cause of elevating the lives of the tribal community. The aim of this initiative is to develop orchards of fruit-bearing trees like Guava, Jackfruit, Lemon, Pomegranate, Chikoo, Litchi, Morenga, Papaya, Coconut, Kaaju, Morenga, etc., for strengthening their livelihood by multiplying their income by 10-15 times per acre.
In this connection, 50 training sessions were also organised to train the farmers. Experts from the State Horticulture Department and the CSR team of NMDC imparted training to 650 farmers. The training sessions imparted knowledge on soil and weather conditions, distance to be maintained between saplings, how to prepare pits, quality and quantity of organic manure to be put in pits, precautions to be taken, etc. This was done after distributing masks to participants, following sanitisation protocols and by maintaining social distancing.
The trainings were organised from June 9 to 20, 2020. Pits for sapling plantation and filling the organic manure in pits was done from June 10 to 25, 2020. Distribution of the saplings and its plantation started from June 29, 2020. This mission of planting 50,000 saplings of fruit-bearing trees in 25 villages will be completed this month.