Reaping the fruits of hard work by redeeming earned SoCCs credit for Phase One…

The 2016 New Year started with a sense of achievement for some of our Borisinh farmers who sincerely followed and participated actively in the SoCCs program since last fall. By start of February half of the 25 Borisinh farmers had already earned around 13000 Social credits and so “Save Indian Farmers” (SIF) took a “Good-will” decision to start purchasing buffalos for them in advance with an agreement that each of them will reach their goal of 15000 Social credits by mid of this year.

Mr. Gautame from our ground partner NGO (Deendayal Trust – FCRA approved) initiated this process by visiting the market and buying appropriate breed of Buffaloes for the Phase I which aimed to start an alternate “Milk business” for these farmers who are activity participating in SoCC’s program since October 2015.

I was able to speak with two farmer’sBabarao Thakre & Santosh Lekule on January 27th who were the first lucky ones to earn the fruits of their hard work and dedication towards our SoCC’s program. Babarao Thakre, who has 4 dependent members in his family was very excited as it was his first time to start the alternate small-scale business of buffalo milking. I wanted to get a real sense of what financial impact Babarao would have in short and long run in his new endeavor. Babarao was quick to share official figures with me. He said his daily milking a buffalo produces on an average of 8 to 10 liters of milk and they collectively sell them to nearest town market at average price of Rs. 40 per liter.

So the approximate income generated from each buffalo per day can be around Rs.300 to Rs.400. Considering normal feeding expenses, few veterinary visits and other maintenance costs, I can confidently say that each of our farmer can not only make at least Rs 8000 extra monthly but also payoff his part of the loan taken to buy the buffalo in years’ time.

Mr. Santosh Lekule was also happy to have an extra buffalo through our program and he had bit more experience of the milk business and also had right contacts to sell his commodity.

As a SIF project director, I want to make sure that this “Feel Good” factor stays forever and is not just temporary.  I did suggest them to maintain a record book of their milk sales and other related expenses. I was also told by the Deendayal people that they are thinking to keep all the buffaloes at a common place (to be decided) near the gram panchayat office. This way it’s easy to feed them together and also one or two people can look after them rather than each farmer dedicating some of their daily time.

There are still four farmers who are active in AI’s SoCC’s program but were not able to deposit their 25% down payment for buffalo due to financial losses from last year.  Praful Ingale is one of them, who is active in the SoCCs program and still waiting. SIF and AI would need to think beyond the current plan and make a decision on how these four individuals can be assisted to reach their goal!

-Preshit Dalal.