#India agriculture

[scorebetter]

India Agriculture

Indian agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for India’s population. As of 2018, agriculture employed more than 50% of the Indian work force and contributed 17–18% to country's GDP.

Indian agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for India’s population. As of 2018, agriculture employed more than 50% of the Indian work force and contributed 17–18% to country’s GDP. The history of agriculture in India dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization. India ranks second worldwide in farm outputs. There are hymns in Vedic literature dedicated to – Agriculture. Consumer…

[fpotci01]

Embrace the future of agriculture with Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). Tata-Cornell Institute offers a comprehensive resource hub for farmers, providing insights into FPO registration, benefits, and best practices. Our platform empowers farmers to make informed decisions, collaborate with peers, and drive sustainable growth. For more information, visit: https://fpo.tci.cornell.edu/

[gaelic]

Three harvesters in an ocean of tea plantations of Munnar mountains

2023-11-20 India, Kerala, Munnar

[noosphe-re]

One cannot have beautiful trees without loving them. Neither goodness of soil, nor rich manure, nor favourable situations will alone make them thrive, but it is the gardener's affection which make them strong and vigorous.

LeGendre, Superintendent of the Royal Gardens under Louis XIII in 1652 (from Fruit Growing In India by W.B. Hayes)

[reasonsforhope]

"A Delhi-based engineer has designed a replacement for polystyrene packaging out of “rice stubble” the dead stalks left over after the rice season in India, millions of tons of which are burned every year.

They say wisdom oft comes from the mouths of babes, and Mr. Arpit Dhupar was at first left scratching his head when his young nephew drew a picture of the world with a grey sky.

Everything else was normal, green grass, yellow sun, white and brown mountains; why was the sky grey? It dawned on him that his nephew was drawing the sky as he saw it every year when the rice stubble was burned: grey.

“We shouldn’t live in a world where we have to explain to kids that the sky should be painted blue. It should be a given,” he told The Better India.

So he launched a new business venture called Dharaksha Ecosystems in order to tackle the rice stubble problem. Essentially, the farmers need it cleared off their land asap after harvest. Its high moisture content means it’s not useful for stove fuel, so they burn it in massive pyres.

In his factory, he turns 250 metric tons of rice stubble harvested from 100 acres of farmland in Punjab and Haryana into packaging, while paying the farmers a rate of $30 per acre for something they would usually burn.

Dhupar originally wanted to use mushrooms to rapidly biodegrade baled stacks of rice stubble, but found that the fungus left behind a metabolite that wasn’t biodegradable—in other words, he’d have to create a waste problem to solve a waste problem.

Over time he realized that the filaments that make up the subterranean structure of the mushrooms, called mycelium, were acting as a sort of binding agent, turning the baled stubble into something durable.

“This wasn’t a waste material but could be a usable one,” said Dhupar. “Through bio-fabrication, we could use the stubble waste to create a material similar to [polystyrene], but one that was biodegradable.”

There are a lot of these sorts of sustainable packaging ideas floating around, invented by people who rarely have experience in markets and commerce. This is not the case with Dhupar’s stubble packaging.

He has already prevented over half a million pounds of polystyrene from entering landfills since launching his product, which has numerous, exceptional properties.

They sell around 20 metric tons of their product every month, making about $30.5 thousand dollars per annum, mostly by selling to glassware companies."

-via Good News Network, 3/22/23

[nemfrog]

Fig. 58. India and Ceylon rice acreage. Each dot represents 10,000 acres. Geography of the world's agriculture. 1917.

[workersolidarity]

(subtitles are autogenerated and are not particularly accurate)

🇮🇳 🚜 🚨

MASSIVE FARMER'S PROTESTS OUTSIDE INDIAN CAPITAL AND ACROSS THE NORTH OF THE COUNTRY

📹 Massive protests are confronted with teargas, armed police with rubber bullets and drones as thousands of farmers, mostly in India's northern Punjab region, protest on Tuesday demanding a Minimum Support Price or MSP for all crops to raise farmer's income.

Dozens of Farmer's unions participated in the strikes, calling for a "Delhi Chalo" or March to Delhi.

Police in and around the capital have erected barriers on highways surrounding New Delhi, and have begun firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the approaching farmers.

Tractors, along with thousands of farm hands, are seen in footage nearing the outskirts of New Delhi, in the northern Haryana state, being confronted by officers with gas and smoke bombs, including some dropped from buzzing drones overhead.

Authorities have shut down Internet services in some areas where protestors approach, and have erected concrete roadblocks and barriers, while local officials have banned public gatherings and are deploying extra security personnel.

Officials in New Delhi emphasized that sufficient police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed to all entry points to the city.

Farmers are demanding dozens of changes, including a new MSP or floor price for crops to increase and guarantee farmer income, as well as a full debit waiver, according to local union officials.

Political officials in New Delhi say they're open to talks, with Agriculture Minister, Arjun Munda telling reporters on Tuesday that the Federal government already is "bound to protect the interest of farmers."

"Farmers also need to understand that inconvenience shouldn’t be caused to the public,” Minister Munda said, adding the government was always ready for negotiations with the Farmer's unions.

“We are ready to do everything possible to find a solution to this issue,” he said.

#source

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[probablyasocialecologist]

A new study launched this week highlights the work of Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) and the remarkable untapped potential of agroecological natural farming in Andhra Pradesh, India.  Spanning over 6 million hectares, and involving 6 million farmers and 50 million consumers, the APCNF represents the largest agroecological transition in the world. Amidst the diverse landscapes of Andhra Pradesh, this state-wide movement is addressing a multitude of development challenges—rural livelihoods, access to nutritious food, biodiversity loss, climate change, water scarcity, and pollution—and their work is redefining the way we approach food systems. Farmers practicing agroecology have witnessed remarkable yield increases. Conventional wisdom suggests that chemical-intensive farming is necessary to maintain high yields. But this study shows agroecological methods were just as productive, if not more so: natural inputs have achieved equal or higher yields compared to the other farming systems—on average, these farms saw an 11% increase in yields—while maintaining higher crop diversity. This significant finding challenges the notion that harmful chemicals are indispensable for meeting the demands of a growing population. The advantages of transitioning to natural farming in Andhra Pradesh have gone beyond just yields. Farmers who used agroecological approaches received higher incomes as well, while villages that used natural farming had higher employment rates. Thanks to greater crop diversity in their farming practice, farmers using agroecology had greater dietary diversity in their households than conventional farmers. The number of ‘sick days’ needed by farmers using natural farming was also significantly lower than those working on chemically-intensive farms. Another important finding was the significant increase in social ‘capital’: community cohesion was higher in natural farming villages, and knowledge sharing had greatly increased—significantly aided by women. The implications for these findings are significant: community-managed natural farming can support not just food security goals, but also sustainable economic development and human development. The study overall sheds light on a promising and optimistic path toward addressing geopolitical and climate impacts, underlining the critical significance of food sovereignty and access to nourishing, wholesome food for communities. Contrary to the misconception that relentlessly increasing food production is the sole solution to cater to a growing population, the truth reveals a different story. While striving for higher yields remains important, the root cause of hunger worldwide does not lie in scarcity, as farmers already produce more than enough to address it. Instead, food insecurity is primarily driven by factors such as poverty, lack of democracy, poor distribution, a lack of post-harvest handling, waste, and unequal access to resources. 

[agriculturelogos]

Unofficial flag and logo used in New York protests (showing support for the Indian farmers protests in 2021)

#agriculture #farming #farm #farmer #farmers protests #agri #India #NYC #New York

[bumblebeeappletree]

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison journeys to India to film the epic work of the Paani Foundation’s Water Cup Competition and Farmer's Cup Competition. We tour the village of Pemgiri, in Maharashtra, who competed in the 2019 competition to install the most amount of water harvesting structures in a 45 day period, and competed had farmer's groups compete in the Farmers Cup Competition in 2023. Guided by Paani Foundation’s chief advisor, Dr. Avinash Pol, we visit the work and see the effects of a watershed-scale groundwater restoration project that has dramatically improved the lives, economy, ecology and stability of this village, and experience the feeling of deep stability that comes with a healthy and abundant landscape.

Paani Foundation:

https://www.paanifoundation.in/

Digital Map Animation:

https://www.pearlriverecodesign.com/

PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE LINK:

https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/cou...

Andrew Millison’s links:

https://www.andrewmillison.com/

https://permaculturedesign.oregonstat...

JOIN THIS CHANNEL to get access to uncut video content and live Q & A sessions:

/ @amillison

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[mannbhaavnii]

today’s harvest 🍀

khurmani is so tasty idc if it’s khumani or khubani in standard hindi; it’s khurmani for me. khubani sounds so wrong and khumani sounds pretentious i don’t care

[fpotci01]

FPO Benefits: Why Indian Farmers Should Join Farmer Producer Organizations

India’s agriculture sector is the backbone of the country, employing millions and providing food security. Yet, many small and marginal farmers struggle to get fair prices, access essential services, and thrive in a competitive market. One solution that has emerged to address these challenges is the formation of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). These FPOs offer numerous benefits that can help uplift farmers and improve their livelihoods.

What Are FPOs?

Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) are collectives where farmers come together to pool resources, share knowledge, and collectively sell their produce. These organizations are legally recognized entities, either as Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) or cooperatives, allowing farmers to work together toward a common goal of improving their incomes and accessing essential agricultural services. The FPO model empowers farmers to strengthen their bargaining power and compete more effectively in the marketplace.

The Struggles of Small Farmers in India

In India, agriculture is dominated by small and marginal farmers, who often own less than two hectares of land. These farmers face numerous challenges, including:

Limited access to markets: Many farmers are forced to sell their produce at low prices due to limited bargaining power and lack of direct market access.

Inadequate access to credit: Small farmers often struggle to secure loans from banks, limiting their ability to invest in quality seeds, fertilizers, and equipment.

High input costs: Rising costs of inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and machinery strain farmers’ already limited resources.

Lack of technology and infrastructure: Many small farmers cannot afford modern farming technologies, resulting in lower productivity.

Middlemen exploitation: In traditional agricultural systems, middlemen often take a large share of profits, leaving farmers with minimal returns.

These challenges underscore the need for collective efforts like FPOs to improve the economic situation of farmers in India.

Benefits of Joining an FPO

Joining an FPO offers a wide range of benefits for farmers, helping them overcome many of the challenges they face in India’s agriculture system.

1. Increased Bargaining Power

One of the most significant benefits of an FPO is the collective strength it provides farmers. When small farmers come together under an FPO, they have greater bargaining power when negotiating prices for their produce. This allows them to bypass middlemen and sell directly to buyers at fair prices. The collective approach also enables farmers to negotiate better deals on inputs like seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, lowering their costs.

2. Access to Markets

FPOs give farmers access to broader markets that may have been previously out of reach. With an FPO Platform in place, farmers can sell their produce to large buyers, government agencies, or even export to international markets. FPOs help facilitate these connections, ensuring farmers get the best value for their crops. With a collective presence, FPOs can also negotiate better logistics and transportation, reducing the burden on individual farmers.

3. Financial Support and Credit Access

Through FPOs, farmers have better access to financial services, including loans, insurance, and subsidies. The NABARD FPO portal, for example, provides resources and support to Farmer Producer Organisations across India, helping them access credit for agricultural inputs and investments. By pooling resources, FPO members can secure better loan terms, allowing them to invest in high-quality seeds, equipment, and irrigation systems that boost productivity.

4. Technology and Training

FPOs act as a hub for knowledge sharing and training, introducing farmers to modern agricultural practices and technologies that can significantly improve yields. Farmers can learn about sustainable farming, organic practices, and climate-resilient crops through these organizations. Many FPOs also collaborate with institutions like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to bring advanced farming techniques and training programs to their members.

By adopting modern technology and methods, farmers can increase crop yields, reduce waste, and become more competitive in the agricultural market. FPOs also make it easier to invest in shared machinery and infrastructure, such as cold storage and processing facilities, which would be difficult for individual farmers to afford.

5. Better Risk Management

Farming is inherently risky, with threats from unpredictable weather, pests, and fluctuating market prices. By joining an FPO, farmers can share these risks. Many FPOs offer insurance schemes, crop diversification advice, and access to disaster relief programs that help protect farmers from the worst impacts of crop failures or market crashes. This collective security offers peace of mind and financial stability to farmers who might otherwise face overwhelming losses.

6. Improved Product Quality and Standards

Through collective action, FPOs can invest in better quality control systems, ensuring that the produce meets market standards. This is particularly important for accessing premium markets where higher quality produce fetches better prices. By pooling resources, FPOs can set up testing facilities, certification systems, and packaging units that improve the quality of the produce, making it more attractive to buyers.

7. Empowerment and Community Building

Perhaps one of the most powerful benefits of FPOs is the sense of empowerment and community it fosters among farmers. Working together, farmers can solve problems collectively, share successes, and support each other in times of need. This collective effort helps strengthen rural communities, giving farmers a stronger voice in advocating for their rights and needs in the agricultural sector.

The Role of the FPO Platform for India

The FPO Platform for India is an initiative aimed at strengthening the role of FPOs in India’s agricultural sector. It provides a comprehensive database of FPOs, resources for registration, and interactive tools to help farmers connect with organizations that can support them. This interactive data platform is designed to streamline the process of setting up and managing FPOs, making it easier for farmers to access the benefits of collective farming.

The FPO Hub offers a centralized place for FPOs to access information, training programs, and government schemes that can help them grow and thrive. By utilizing this platform, FPOs can better coordinate their efforts, access new markets, and improve the livelihoods of their members.

How FPOs Are Transforming Agriculture in India

The emergence of FPOs is transforming the agricultural landscape in India. By empowering farmers through collective action, FPOs are addressing many of the systemic challenges in Indian agriculture. From improving market access to promoting sustainable farming practices, FPOs are helping farmers increase their incomes, reduce their dependence on middlemen, and build more resilient agricultural businesses.

The Indian government, along with organizations like NABARD and the Food and Agriculture Organization, has recognized the importance of FPOs in driving agricultural development. Initiatives like the FPO agriculture registration process and the FPO Platform for India make it easier for farmers to join or establish FPOs, ensuring that more farmers can benefit from this innovative model.

Conclusion

The benefits of joining an FPO are clear. For small and marginal farmers, these organizations offer a pathway to financial security, access to markets, and the adoption of modern farming techniques. As the agricultural landscape in India continues to evolve, Farmer Producer Organizations will play a crucial role in ensuring that farmers can thrive in an increasingly competitive market.

By joining an FPO, Indian farmers can take control of their futures, work together to achieve common goals, and build a more sustainable, prosperous agricultural sector. The collective strength of FPOs is empowering farmers, improving livelihoods, and shaping the future of India agriculture. The time is now for farmers across India to recognize the immense potential of FPOs and the numerous benefits they offer. For more information, visit: https://fpo.tci.cornell.edu/

[gaelic]

Tea harvester going down a slippery hill with their heavy load of tea leaves.

It was the end of the day, harvesters were only women, more than a douzain, but a man came with a truck to load all the bags. He was weighing every bag and the salary of the workers depended on it. 

I had been around making photos for some time, observing silently, until one of the women pointed at me and her bag saying something like, help me instead of taking pictures. I said ok, no problem, and pretended I could not lift the bag to make them all laugh and they did. But I’m almost sure I could never have lifted it, put it on my head and walked down this brutal slope.

2023-11-20 India, Kerala, Munnar

[thoughtportal]

Permaculture Instructor Andrew Millison travels to the village of Laporiyah in Rajasthan India to see the 45 year water harvesting and community development project spearheaded by waterman Laxman Singh. We spent 2 days touring the village with Laxman and his team, including well known academic Vishnu Sharma. Vishnu has specialized in the revitalization of Rajasthan during his long career and we were very lucky to have him as Laxman's interpreter. This village has experienced such an incredible transformation due to the work of the villagers, it is hard to express in one video.

[reasonsforhope]

“Until as recently as 1970, India was a land with more than 100,000 distinct varieties of rice. Across a diversity of landscapes, soils, and climates, native rice varieties, also called “landraces,” were cultivated by local farmers. And these varieties sprouted rice diversity in hue, aroma, texture, and taste.

But what sets some landraces in a class of their own—monumentally ahead of commercial rice varieties—is their nutrition profiles. This has been proved by the research of Debal Deb, a farmer and agrarian scientist whose studies have been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and books.

In the mid-1960s, with backing from the U.S. government, India’s agricultural policy introduced fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation facilities, and high-yielding varieties of crops under the moniker of a “Green Revolution” to combat hunger. Instead, it began an epidemic of monocultures and ecological destruction.

In the early 1990s, after realizing that more than 90% of India’s native rice varieties had been replaced by a handful of high-yielding varieties through the Green Revolution, Deb began conserving indigenous varieties of rice. Today, on a modest 1.7-acre farm in Odisha, India, Deb cultivates and shares 1,485 of the 6,000 unique landraces estimated to remain in India.

Deb and collaborators have quantified the vitamin, protein, and mineral content in more than 500 of India’s landraces for the first time, in the lab he founded in 2014, Basudha Laboratory for Conservation. In one extraordinary discovery, the team documented 12 native varieties of rice that contain the fatty acids required for brain development in infants.

“These varieties provide the essential fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids that are found in mother’s milk but lacking in any formula foods,” Deb says. “So instead of feeding formula foods to undernourished infants, these rice varieties can offer a far more nutritious option...”

Deb’s conservation efforts are not to preserve a record of the past, but to help India revive resilient food systems and crop varieties. His vision is to enable present and future agriculturists to better adapt to climate change...

Deb conserves scores of climate-resilient varieties of rice originally sourced from Indigenous farmers, including 16 drought-tolerant varieties, 20 flood-tolerant varieties, 18 salt-tolerant varieties, and three submergence-tolerant varieties. He shares his varieties freely with hundreds of small farmers for further cultivation, especially those farming in regions prone to these kinds of climate-related calamities. In 2022 alone, Deb has shared his saved seed varieties with more than 1,300 small farmers through direct and indirect seed distribution arrangements in several states of India.

One of these farmers is Shamika Mone. Mone received 24 traditional rice varieties from Deb on behalf of Kerala Organic Farmers Association, along with training on maintaining the purity of the seeds. Now these farmers have expanded their collection, working with other organic farming collectives in the state of Kerala to grow around 250 landraces at two farm sites. While they cultivate most of their varieties for small-scale use and conservation, they also cultivate a few traditional rice varieties for wider production, which yield an average of 1.2 tons per acre compared with the 1 ton per acre of hybrid varieties.

“But that’s only in terms of yield,” Mone says. “We mostly grow these for their nutritional benefits, like higher iron and zinc content, antioxidants, and other trace elements. Some varieties are good for lactating mothers, while some are good for diabetic patients. There are many health benefits.”

These native varieties have proven beneficial in the face of climate change too.

With poor rains in 2016, for example, the traditional folk rice variety Kuruva that Mone had planted turned out to be drought-tolerant and pest-resistant. And in 2018, due to the heavy rains and floods, she lost all crops but one: a folk rice variety called Raktashali that survived underwater for two days.

“They have proven to be lifesavers for us,” Mone says.” -via Yes! Magazine, 12/14/22

[viagginterstellari]

Millstone - Orchha, 2013