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Until four years ago, Somwati Kondar fought a daily battle to get food on the table. “We did not grow anything, so all the food was bought from the market. My family of five could only eat when my husband and I found work as labourers or sold firewood,” said the 45-year-old resident of Ranipur village in Panna district, Madhya Pradesh.
“But since 2021, when I started growing mushrooms at home, we have not worried about food,” she said. Kondar is one of 65 women from the tribal-dominated Ranipur, Gandhi Gram, Maanjha, Sunhara and Bador villages in Panna who grow mushrooms. The region is known for its diamond reserves. With much of the land under mines, there is little scope for agriculture or other livelihood opportunities. Men often work at diamond mines or stone quarries.
But in the long term, men contract lung ailments such as tuberculosis and silicosis, and many die at an early age. The women then take up the family's responsibility and work as manual labourers for 10-15 days a month, earning Rs 200-250 per day.
In 2021, the women took up mushroom cultivation, with support from Prithvi Trust, a Panna-based non-profit that works on welfare of women and tribal communities. Explaining why they chose mushrooms, Samina Baig, director of Prithvi Trust, said, "Tribal families in Panna have small land holdings and houses. It is difficult for them to launch large enterprises. However, mushrooms can be cultivated easily at home, even with limited resources. Their cultivation can provide decent profit with
low input costs."
“Another point is that tribal families do not have the means to buy green vegetables and costly ingredients, and often resort to eating chapatis with salt. Women suffer from anaemia and children get malnourished. Mushrooms are rich in protein and so help augment the families’ diet too,” she added.
A typical tribal household in the villages has a 3 m- to 4.5 m-long verandah with a thatched roof. The women hung mushroom bags — plastic bags that serve as containers for substrates like stubble, upon which mushrooms grow — from the wooden frame that holds the roof. Women in one-room houses hang cloth sheets in one half of the room to keep the bags. Further, Prithvi Trust, along with Delhi-based non-profit Environics Trust, set up a mushroom training centre in Gandhi Gram to train people in mushroom cultivation.
Currently, each household hangs 15-20 bags of mushrooms, which are ready to harvest in 21 days. One household produces about 90 kg of mushrooms, of which 30 kg is set aside for the family’s consumption. “I cultivate 80 bags of mushrooms that supply food for three months. I earn about Rs 5,000 per year selling the surplus,” said Kondar.
To market the mushrooms, the women put up stalls at local fairs and government events, and advertise on social media and local newspapers. Now, said Kondar, efforts are being made in coordination with the district administration to introduce the mushrooms in midday meals and food served in anganwadis.
This story was first published in the June 16-30 print edition of Down To Earth.