Worldwide degraded soil, water and vegetation is making farms less fertile and threatening the future of food supply and one of the major problems faced by villages.
One such village in Meghalaya is Mawthong in South West Khasi Hills district. Established and founded in 1845, the village which had just three households now boasts a total population of 1822. The people depended on agriculture and paddy cultivation, which is their source of income. But as years passed, a crisis unfolded as for three decades from 1910 to 1930, the village saw its fair share of natural disasters that destroyed the agricultural land.
Fast forward to the 21st Century, through the ongoing Community-Led Landscape Management Project (CLLMP) under Meghalaya Basin Management Agency (MBMA), the village took a giant leap and decided to revive the riches of its soils for the future by forming the Village Natural Resource Management Committee (VNRMC) in 2018 with nine members drawn from the village council, SHG, women and youth groups. The community then inducted three Village Community Facilitators (VCFs), as foot soldiers to lead and plan actions and interventions for proper management of natural resources in the village.
The first step was to improve degraded waste land. People of Mawthong dug out the soil two-meters deep and replaced it with fertile soil from neighbouring areas to restore fertility and productivity which began in 2021.
On this the villagers planted more than 150 samplings in the area and till last month only three sampling perished.
The MBMA said that though the area was revived and renewed, the most important aspect is that the villagers were able to improve soil fertility and fill the land with new trees and plants, making the area lush and green.
Not stopping at that, the VNRMC identified and planned out better interventions to address the challenges in their village that is to manage its water sources by constructing spring chambers, check dams and irrigation canals.
At present the village has constructed seven spring chambers and two check dams with irrigation canal within the village, which benefitted 250 households.
All these were funded by the World Bank and the village committee are contented to have stood on a new ground and plan a better future.
