presentation made at International Organic Farming Conference organised at Katmandu, Nepal from 14-15th May, 2019 Organised by High Level Task force on Organic Farming in Nepal

1. ScalingupAgroecologicalApproaches
Learning from Experiences
Ramanjaneyulu
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture

2. The current crisis in farming
Land
Labor
Inputs
Subsidies
Capital
Yield
Prices
Income
Production resources
Risks
•Pests and Diseases
•Droughts
•Floods
Moving away
from the hands of
Cultivators
Yields are stagnated
Prices not being remunerative
Ecological risks
•Groundwater depletion
•Pesticide poisoning
•Soil salinity etc
Living costs
Income sources
Social security

3. Centre for Sustainable Agriculture
50,000 farmers directly and 200,000 farmers indirectly
Agroecological
Approaches
• Organic/Natural Farming
• Adapting to Climate Change
• PGS Regional Council
• Open Source Seed Initiative
Diversifying Livelihoods
• Supplementary/
complementary livelihoods
• Building knowledge, skills
and attitude
• Individual/group enterprises
• Handholding support
Building Producer
Organizations
• Supporting FPOs, CBOs,
SHGs
• Food hubs
• Sahaja Aharam Retail
Improving Governance
• Research and Analysis of
policy support and
regulatory systems
• Monitoring performance of
public support systems
• Kisan Mitra Helpline
Caring for those who feed the nation

4. Focus of work
2019
Sikkim
Tripura
Punjab
Maharashtra
Telangana
Andhra Pradesh
CSA offices and Project sites (6 states)

5. Water Harvesting Adaptive Cropping Systems
Renewable sources of Nutrients
Quality Seed System
Non Pesticidal Management
Agroecological approaches
Livestock

6. Abiotic stress surveillance
6
• Weather monitoring:
• The weather parameters - atmospheric temperature, humidity,
rainfall light intensity, through an automatic weather station
which is weather proof, solar powered and has cellular
connectivity.
• Daily update on weather parameters helps to monitor the
abiotic stresses like drought, floods, hailstorms etc and make
advisories.
• This information is also useful to access the crop insurance etc.
Currently localized information is not available.
• Farmers will be given advisories based on the local weather and
the data will also be used to build long term predictions.
• Soil moisture monitoring: Soil moisture is monitored in 3-5
locations per soil type in a village. The sample size would be based
on the soil types and spread. Currently we use digital/analog,
manual/automatic probes to assess the soil moisture levels twice
a week.
• For this we use Field Sensor nodes (soil moisture probe, soil
temperature probe) which are weather proof and have built in
communication with local sink which can be short range (200 m)
and long range (1 km) and from the data sink data can be
transmitted to cloud data base
• Advisories for crop choices, irrigation and other crop management
practices would be given based on the data received.

7. 7
Biotic Stress Surveillance
• Regular monitoring at the village level to understand the kind of pest
and disease build up species wise, number wise and abiotic stresses like
drought, advise farmers for necessary action.
• Pest data is correlated with weather data for long term prediction
Insect Pests
• Insect pests are attracted to light, color and smell of pheromones.
Using these characters a pest surveillance system with Light traps, sticky
traps and pheromone traps can be built at the village level.
• We follow fixed plot survey methods where different traps (based on
the cropping pattern in the region) and the data is compiled to make
assessment of the pest/disease situation and advisories are issued at
the village level.
• The traps are based on the insect types. For examples more sucking
pests are attracted to light and sticky traps, while borers are attacted to
pheromone traps.
Plant Diseases
• Plant disease assessment is based on the survey done in identified
fields to assess the disease severity.
• Incidence and severity: low (<20%), moderate (20-40%), high (40%<)
• Percentage of infection is calculated based on the following formula
Light trap
Sticky trap
Pheromone trap

8. Mapping weather, crop stage, biotic and abiotic stresses

10. Farmer Field Schools
• Training every farmer
• Practitioners as trainers
• Knowledge based extension

11. Bio villages
• Natural/organic farming
• Adapting to climate change
• Alternate livelihoods
• Water Positive farming
• Carbon neutral villages

12. Creating Livelihoods
Sericulture
Backyard Poultry
Honey Production
• Developing Livelihoods Plan
• Building the capacities
• Green Enterprises for Bioinputs
• Providing linkages
For diversifying incomes and assets
Composting
Azolla
Sheep and Goat

13. Compost enterprise

14. FoodProcessing

15. Abhihara
Organic Cotton value chain

16. Dorli, Wardha dist, Maharashtra
Mulugu, Siddipet dist, Telangana
Enebavi, Jangoan dist, Telangana
Varanasi, Utter Pradesh

17. Rural backyard kitchen gardening

18. CSA model of vegetables production
0.5 acre
Creepers
Vegetables
Bed size
4 ft – wide Bed, 1 ft height and 1.5 ft path
Pandal in 25% area of beds and
creepers over pandal, 75% area on beds for
vegetables.
Beds material
1. 20 % Compost/FYM
2. 20% Green biomass
3. 50% red soil
4. 5% Activated charcoal or verimi
compost
5. 5% bio fertiliers – T. viride, PSB,
Pseudomonas
6. Sprinkle Jeevamruth /Amurth jal
7. Dabolkar method to enrich with
micronutrients annually
Border crops 1 row
•Jowar, bajra and Pigeon pea 1 spacing
•Gorinta, karounda for live fence
•Drumstick, Banana, Curry leaf- 9 ft space
•Guava, papaya, lemon 18 ft space
Compost pit
Green biomass plants
Water tank for gravitational drip
Commercial Half an acre model for women livelihood

20. Demo plots at Institute for Rural Development

21. Incubating community institutions and enterprises
• Organising Federations of farmers groups
• Farmer Producer Organisations
• Farmer Cooperatives-16 in Andhra
Pradesh, 4 in Telangana, 2 in Sikkim
• Farmer Producer Companies: 7 in
Telangana, 1 in Maharashtra, 2 in
Tripura
• Handholding Supporting 225 in
Telangana
• Hand holding support to 78 FPOs in
Andhra Pradesh
• Organic Retail Marketing through
Consumer Cooperative, Hyderabad

22. Support Services
FPOs
Extension Services
Business Planning
Financial
Mobilisation
Management and Governance
Quality Management
Convergence with
ongoing programs and
schemes
Market linkages
Value addition

23. Kisan Business School
• Participative designing
and problem solving
• Learning-by–doing
• Arriving at Interactive and
inclusive solutions
• Season-long approach

24. • Natural/Organic Food directly from farmers
• Food/Nutritional Counselling for consumers
• Better price to farmers
• FPOhub to incubate farmer producer organisations

25. Quality Management and traceability
Certificate no : Q9186414570
PGSI/W(TG)-1276
Eco footprints

26. 1800 120 3244; 08500 98 3300
• Cluster level
• Making public support services
accessible for farmers
• FPOs, Farmer Service Centres,
Volunteers, Department
• District Level
• Coordinating with various line
departments
• Distress Helpline to resolve
grievances and rapid response in
case of extremities
• State and National Level
• Monitoring public support
services for farmers
• Policy Research and advocacy
KisanMitra
Improving governance of agriculture support systems

27. KisanMitra
Farmer Service Centres
• FPOs and Women SHGs
• Departments/offices
• 100 centres in AP and telangana
• Provide all services to farmers
– Extension support
– Inputs
– Custom hiring centre
– Financial linkages
– Procurement for market

28. v
KisanMitra
improving governance

29. farm support services
http://www.ekrishi.net
• Pestoscope
• FARMetrix
• FPOhub
• Traceability
• MARKET
• HIRE
• FINANCE
• KisanMitra

31. Awards and Recognitions
• 2017: Sakshi Excellence Award for Best Contribution to
Agriculture
• 2014: Best Rural Innovation Award for Non Pesticidal
Management in Bihar Rural Innovation Forum
• 2014: Best Rural Innovation Award for ‘Community
Managed Sustainable Agriculture’ in Maharashtra Rural
Innovation Forum
• 2012: Best Green Enterprises award by Hivos for NPM
scalingup in AP
• 2010: Krishi Gourav Award for Enebavi
• 2008: TV9 ‘Navya’ Award for effective campaign
• 2005: World Bank Development Market Place Award

32. Going about in Nepal
• HR Area - Provide Advance and Refresher Trainings, Grade and Certify
Master Farmers and other HR for Organic Farming;
• Develop Farmer-led Resource Centre/Diversified Models to help in this
training
• Support District Team(s) in Planning, Training, Trouble shooting and
Monitoring
• Farmers' Institutions area - Strengthening/forming of Cluster Farmers'
Federations; Area Federations
• Planning, Implementations and Monitoring
• Establish community seed banks and seed enterprises to promote organic
seed
• Run kisan business school to improve managerial and entrepreneurial skill
of farmers.
• Identify location specific food processing units at the cluster level
• Developing business plans and
• Linking to markets

33. Identify resource agency(ies)
• Knowledge management and Support: identifying innovations,
documenting successful models, developing resource material,
organising trainings for building capacities on organic farming, media
engagement for visibility
• Community Seed Banks and Seed Enterprises
• Food processing: trainings and offering as service
• Consumer Campaign
• Research partnership: developing research protocols and partnership
with university
• Market Linkages: provide forward and backward linkages
• Quality Management: setting up systems for internal control systems
for PGS or third party certification, and for NPM
• IT support services: crop diagnostics, FPO management, Quality
management, source tracking and marketing

34. Building resource persons
• Need for diploma degree courses on
• Organic/Natural farming
• Cooperative management
• Livelihood planning and management
• Good quality trainings (with a accreditation/ grading system) for
practitioners and existing staff
• Organic/Natural farming
• Cooperative management
• Livelihoods-food processing/input production/seed production
etc

35. Public policy
• Plan for 5 to 10 years
• Change would be incremental
• Identify geographical focus areas
• Invest on research, extension, education, infrastructure, farmers coops, farmer markets
• Improve regulatory systems-have clear plan for chemical use reduction, stop GM
• Incentivise farmers for ecological benefits they provide
• If tenant farmers are there ensure long term access to lands
35

36. Centreforsustainableagriculture
http://www.csa-india.org
http://www.krishi.tv
http://www.ekrishi.net
http://www.sahajaaharam.com
eKrishi : 08500 68 3300
Sahaja Aharam : 08500 78 33 00
Rytu Swarajya Vedhika: 08500 98 33 00
mobile : 090 0069 9702
csa@csa-india.org, Facebook: ramoo.agripage