Letter: Singod a small tribe village, about 12km from Navsari Town, is being developed as a model for generation livelihoods in rural areas.
Villagers who mainly depend on agricultural work and labor, have adopted a new method of income generation which includes aquaculture cultivation, poultry and vegetables.
A group of 42 people from the tribal village produced Rs 1.85 lakh during the first harvesting (Mela) held on Sunday.
The villagers sell 1,200 kg of fish worth Rs 1.56 lakh, 120 kg of poultry worth Rs 21.00 and Rs 7,500 vegetables.
Their efforts for the past 10 months paid well.
It is estimated that groups can earn around Rs 14 lakh per year by harvesting fish, growing vegetables and poultry.
This village is part of the pilot project Navsari Gujarat Research Center (NGRC), a remote center of the Indian Agricultural Research Board (ICAR) and the Institute of BraChishwater Cultivation Center (CIBA).
Icar-Ciba located in Chennai is the center of nodal for the research of brackish water aquaculture in this country.
Responsible for the research of brackish water and the development of farmers’ livelihoods.
“As part of the project, our goal is to develop a livelihood model for the tribal population.
The village population groups get help from us to develop the necessary infrastructure,” said Pankaj Patil, a scientist at NGRC.
Kaushik Halpati, the leader of the Singod Halpati Samaj Yuva Matsya Udhyog Juth, said that their lives had changed because the aquaculture in the pool of 2 acres had so far been not used.