AGRI NUTRI GARDEN

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Context

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM) has observed ‘Agri Nutri Garden Week’ from 10th to 17th January, 2022 through awareness campaign and encouraging establishment of ‘Agri Nutri Gardens’ in the rural households.

Aim of the campaign

To support every rural poor household to have Agri Nutri Garden to fulfill the need of the family’s nutrition and any excess production can also be sold for income generation.

Significance of the Campaign

The initiative is helping in promoting nutritional awareness, education and behavioral change in rural areas involving farm women and school children, harnessing traditional knowledge through the local recipe to overcome malnutrition and implementing nutrition-sensitive agriculture through homestead agriculture and Nutri-garden.

About Agri Nutri Garden Project

In the Agri Nutri Garden project organic nutritional gardens are set up at households to make available nutritious vegetables and fruits, prepare them to become self-sufficient in vegetables and thereby create a healthy society.
Objective: The main objective of introducing the concept of nutri-gardens was to encourage tribal women to cultivate healthy food crops in their backyards.

Importance

A nutri-garden ensures an inexpensive, regular and handy supply of fresh vegetables, which are basic to nutrition.
Green vegetables contain vitamins and minerals, which protect us against diseases.
Tribal and rural communities have easy access to all the essential resources like land and water but they lack knowledge about the nutritional value and scientific consumption pattern of the available and easily-cultivable nutritious food products.
Hence, nutri-gardens may be regarded as a simple but innovative option to:
Bridge the gap between the available resources and its utilization in a sustainable manner
Address issues like malnutrition
Create additional revenue-generating opportunities for farmer communities, especially women
Introduce healthy eating practices

Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana

About: Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), in June 2011 as a restructured version of Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY).It is a centrally sponsored programme.
Aim: Creating efficient and effective institutional platforms of the rural poor enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial services.

Key Features of DAY-NRLM

Universal Social Mobilisation

At least one woman member from each identified rural poor household, is to be brought under the Self Help Group (SHG) network in a time bound manner.
Special emphasis is particularly on vulnerable communities such as manual scavengers, victims of human trafficking, Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) and bonded labour.

Participatory Identification of Poor (PIP)

Target Group is identified through the Participatory Identification of Poor (PIP) method. The NRLM Target Group (NTG) derived through the PIP is de-linked from the BPL.

Community Funds as Resources in Perpetuity

NRLM provides Revolving Fund (RF) and Community Investment Fund (CIF) as resources in perpetuity to the institutions of the poor, to strengthen their institutional and financial management capacity.

Financial Inclusion

On the demand side, it promotes financial literacy among the poor and provides catalytic capital to the SHGs and their federations.
On the supply side, the Mission coordinates with the financial sector and encourages use of Information, Communication & Technology (ICT) based financial technologies, business correspondents and community facilitators like ‘Bank Mitras’.

Convergence and partnerships

Linkages with PRIs

For regular consultations between such institutions and PRIs for exchange of mutual advice, support and sharing of resources.