The question was the one every smallholder asks: more value from the same ground, without buying your way there.
As a member of an Aajeevika Adhikar Sangathan and a local Krishi Mitra, Shanti Devi went to practical training and on an exposure visit. Then she tested on her own land.
Brinjal on part of the plot, with trellising and mixed cropping. An onion nursery. Radish seed preserved for the next cycle. One brinjal cycle returned particularly well.
The reason her plot mattered beyond her household is that a Krishi Mitra keeps the knowledge in the field. A neighbour can walk over, look at the spacing, ask what it cost, watch what fails, and adapt it to her own soil and water. That is a different transaction from being handed a technique by someone who will not be there at harvest.
It also changed whose expertise was on the record. Women choose seed, run nurseries, weed, harvest and sell, and are described as helping. Taking the peer-resource role made Shanti’s technical decisions visible as decisions.
DEHAT paid for the training and the travel. She chose what to test, worked the plot, and read the results out to other farmers.
A neighbour can walk over, look at the spacing, and ask what it cost. That is a different transaction.
One Farmer, Then Twenty
A Krishi Mitra costs a training, an exposure visit and some seed. What it produces is a plot other farmers can stand in front of, which is the only agricultural extension that has ever really worked here.