Challenges faced by the community earlier

Accessibility:

The cluster of Pipariya situated amidst the buffer zone of Panna Tiger Reserve faces the biggest challenges of accessibility being more than 70 + from the District headquarter in Chhatarpur surrounded by forest.

Awareness:

Although electricity has reached Pipariya cluster but being located amidst the forest, frequently electric poles get damaged and it takes sometimes 2 to 3 weeks to get it repaired. They earlier didn 't had awareness of any alternate.

Adoption:

Villagers were not sure earlier whether solar pumps can really solve their problem, although some of the early adopters were hopeful but most of the villagers were not positive to adopt to solar irrigation techniques.

How Things Started to Change:

Haritika while working in the Pipariya Cluster met with the community members and understood their challenges through Participatory Rapid Apprisal exercises. During the interaction, one of the biggest challenges which came forward was the inconsistent source of irrigation which was hampering their agricultural crops. Since Haritika had prior installed 2 HP Solar pumps in the nearby village in Chandanpura, so we requested some of the villagers to visit the it to understand how community solar irrigation pumps are running in that village and how it has changed the lives of the community.

Holistic Development

Towards Climate-Smart Agriculture

With 4 Community Solar irrigation pumps already being installed in Pipariya Cluster, more community members are now getting interested to adopt solar irrigation techniques.

Further, we are supporting them to adapt to climate-smart agriculture and already planted 3,000 fruit plants in the cluster and further would be planing another 17,000 plants in the next season.

We have further identified lead farmers where farm demonstrations of improved seeds are carried out for seed production which can be multiplied further through community seed banks. With access to irrigation ensured now farmers can easily take their crops in the Rabi season and increase their annual income by 30,000 to 50,000 through the adoption of multilayer farming, horticulture crops along with agricultural crops through assured irrigation.

Villagers were not sure earlier whether solar pumps can really solve their problem, although some of the early adopters were hopeful but most of the villagers were not positive to adopt to solar irrigation techniques.

Haritika while working in the Pipariya Cluster met with the community members and understood their challenges through Participatory Rapid Apprisal exercises.