Anantapur dryland audit: soil organic carbon doubled across 36 villages

The cluster of 36 villages had lost over 40% of their topsoil to runoff over the two decades before SEARCH arrived. The first eighteen months of the programme were spent on the soil itself — contour bunding on every hectare under cultivation, gully plugs across the worst-affected micro-watersheds, and vermicompost adoption through farmer-led demonstrations.

What the closing audit found

• Soil organic carbon doubled across treated plots over six years
• Runoff coefficient down by half across the worst-affected micro-watersheds
• Average rabi yield held within 10% of kharif yield in a delayed-monsoon year
• 36 villages now self-managing the field-school cycle without SEARCH staff

From year two onwards we layered in dryland cropping advisory. Farmer field schools — run by farmers, hosted by farmers — replaced top-down extension visits. The cropping calendar shifted to drought-tolerant millets and pulses on the worst-degraded plots, with gradual reintroduction of groundnut and pigeon pea where the soil supported it.

“Our grandparents farmed millets here. Then our parents stopped because the market shifted. Now we are growing them again — and the land is showing us why we should.”— M Lakshmi, Farmer — Madakasira mandal, Anantapur