‘Livelihood Generating through Farm Mechanization’ is a livelihood development project funded by farm division of Mahindra and Mahindra Limited. The project is designed and implemented by Centum Foundation across 3 locations i.e. Nagpur (Maharashtra), Jaipur (Rajasthan) and Zaheerabad (Telangana). Under this project 720 rural men and women (240 at each location) are being trained in tractor driving and utilization of tractor mount agriculture equipment.

The customized content for the training is developed by Centum Foundation. A base line survey is designed and conducted at the beginning of the project so that the impact could be accurately estimated at the end of the project. Each of the beneficiary receives a training of 20 days (2 days theory + 18 days practicals). Centum Foundation ensures that the beneficiaries receive learner’s license and facilitates access to permanent license. The duration of the project is 6 months.

Following are the objectives of the project:

• Creating sources of livelihood by capacity building of rural men and women as tractor operators and tractor mount agriculture machine operators
• Bridging the gender disparity in farm mechanization as 30 percent of beneficiaries are women
• Engaging the community in enhancing farm productivity as the tractors and agriculture equipment for training are hired from the local community and the project team is hired from the community
• Benefit the farmer community in areas of intervention as post successful completion of the training each of the beneficiary would use the tractor mount equipment on minimum of 1.5 acres of farmland 
• Improve the penetration of farm mechanization in the selected geography.

540 beneficiaries are already trained under this project and under the on-job training (OJT) segment of the curriculum they have cumulatively benefitted 286 farmers by using tractor-mount farm equipment on 286 acres of farmland. 

• 540 people have been benefitted out of which 150 are women, for which the 700 acres of 300 marginalized farmers have been brought in use by the on job tainers for learning.
• The female beneficiaries are planning to buy a group tractor so that they can use it for their farming as well as any other distribution jobs. 
• We are also helping the beneficiaries for facilitating their Driving license.

The people benefited by the project are:

1. Owners of tractors from which we rent tractors.
2. Women by learning tractor driving, which would help them in their livelihood enhancement as well as earning. 
3. The marginal farmers by saving money and time and improving productivity by the on job trainers practicing on their fields.