Towards long term solutions to the problem of crop damage by wild animals

Crops getting damaged by wild herbivorous animals is a major concern for the farming community living near wildlife parks and forests. Although the farmers suffering from damage are to be compensated by law, there are multiple hurdles in the implementation of the law. Since the frequency of damage is very high, it is physically impossible to do a panchnama of every instance of damage. The protocol offers opportunities for corruption and farmers are not satisfied with the implementation.

Thus, as an alternative solution to compensate farmers, Naam Foundation came up with the Support Cum Reward Scheme. The reward or support is calculated as a percentage based on the average deficit in the final yield in an agricultural belt of comparable risk. It is given to individual farmers as a percentage of their produce. All data in a given belt is based on self-reporting by farmers which are then verified by neighbouring farmers.

This system is self-operated by the farmer community and no external verification is needed since only honest reporting gives maximum payoff to farmers. For implementing the system the farmers need cooperation and organized behavior.
The expected end result is that a model of cooperative self-organized system is established and demonstrated and the state government would be pursued to adopt the system for state-wide implementation.

This scheme is under trial implementation in two villages near Tadoba Sanctuary. The scheme is being carried out by senior scientist Dr. Milind Watve and Mrs. Poorva Joshi (Bioconcepts, Pune).
A total amount of Rs. 6,07,314 was rewarded to around 71 farmers who have benefited from this scheme.