Dhani Ram Kushwaha alias Dhanua, a farmer of village Ubaro, Tehsil Niwari, Distt. Tikamgarh (MP) owns 4 acre cultivated land adjacent to forest area which is far away from his village. His holding is sloppy with typical red soil having poor nutrient status. This is only source of livelihood for Dhani Ram. Due to age old practices and continuous drought his income of ₹14,000 per annum from land could barely meet his expenses. Dhani Ram, initiated a program in his village on water harvesting, crop demonstrations and agroforestry and requested the institute to provide technical support on agroforestry.

He opted for demonstration of agroforestry systems in his field and installation of two gabion structure in nallah passing through his field. In kharif, for demonstration Sh. Dhani Ram was provided with groundnut seed var. Kaushal and balanced doze of fertilizer for one acre land. He harvested 6 q groundnut yield from demonstration plots which was 1.5 times higher than his traditional practice.

 Centre demonstrated guava and citrus based agroforestry system on his three acre crop land.

Over flowing of check dam  twice in monsoon near Dhani Ram’s field resulted  in 2 m water recharge in well. His income doubled in the very first year from crops. Farmer was supplied with seedlings of Lasoda for plantation along roadside, Karonda as live fence along one side of field boundary and teak on boundary bordering forest. He was given aonla plants (cv. Krishna) for planting in crop land on other side of nallah. Due to good antecedent moisture conditions, he had also started growing different cash crops viz brinjal, karela, chilli, bottle guard etc. In this way, he never left fields without crop and maintains the fertility of soil by use of organic manure. His family is getting year round employment and earning regular income. He is earning around 40-50 thousand per annum from his land. This way smile brought back to Dhani Ram.