Alfred Schmidley, Aanand Kumar, and Steve Sonka at a farmers’ pilot site where villagers have been introduced to open-drum threshing. |
Steve Sonka, director of the institute, toured three districts under CSISA’s Bihar Hub and visited the Bihar Agricultural University, government offices, local NGOs, and other CSISA partners who are pilot-testing improved postharvest technologies among marginal smallholder farmers and women’s groups.
“Seeing the problems firsthand and hearing from the farmers provided us valuable insights about what can be done,” Dr. Sonka said, who spent five days last week to see for himself the areas that stand to benefit from better postharvest technologies.
Women villagers demonstrate newly learned mechanical threshing skills and now earn Rph 180 [2.95 USD]/hour by offering contract threshing services. |
“Our goal is to sustainably address postharvest bottlenecks to reduce losses and drudgery while providing new income earning opportunities,” said Alfred Schmidley, value chain specialist at IRRI. “No single actor can do this alone. It is only through working together that farmers can learn about these options and help us understand what is needed for wider adoption.”
Members of a women’s self-help group discuss their next steps in scaling out mechanical threshing services. |
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