Even though India has the world's largest cattle population, less than four percent of the land is classified as pastureland. Most of this land is overgrazed and degraded to varying degrees. Water and wind erosion have made things worse. The challenge is to prevent erosion and to restore and regenerate natural resources. Through the Community Property Resource programme, the project aims to utilise common land for massive afforestation, tree planting and fodder production - all with the participation of the farmers. This programme will prevent further deterioration of the land and meet the fuel, wood and fodder needs of the community.
The community will plant multipurpose trees, protect the land from grazing and stop cutting of trees. The responsibility of maintaining and managing these resources lies with the community since the common land belongs to the entire community. This programme has a number of related benefits:
- It will maintain and increase land productivity through nutrient recycling and soil protection, at low capital and labour costs.
- It will increase the value of output on a given area of land through spatial intercropping of tree and other species.
- It will expand the range of output from a given area and increase self sufficiency.
- It will provide useful applications for underutilised land.
In project villages, registered Village Development Societies (VDS) or unregistered Gram Samsthas (GS), will take the responsibility of managing the Community Property Resources.
