Engaging with Policy

2004-2016 …caring for those who feed the nation

Head office: 12-13-445, Street no.1, Tarnaka, Secunderabad, Telanagana- 500 017Contacts: http://www.csa-india.org, email: csa@csa-india.org, ph. 040-27017735

One cannot solve new problems with old mindset

Andhra Pradesh Maharashtra Punjab Telangana

Sikkim Tripura

Crisis in Indian Agriculture

• Economic Crisis– Increasing costs of cultivation and decreasing returns

– Reducing public support and increasing indebtedness

• Ecological Crisis– Due to maximizing the output of a narrow range of species leading to monoculture of crops and

varieties,

– Capital depletion and massive additions of external inputs (e.g. energy, water, chemicals), and

– never caring about the externalities

• Socio-political crisis– Increasing tenancy, land use shift

– Huge migration

• Climate Crisis– Increased frequency of droughts, floods and cyclones

– Extreme temperatures

Estimated Income and Expenditure of Farmers in India

Compiled from NSSO 59th and 70th Round

NSSO 59th Round (2003) NSSO 70th Round (2014)Land holding

Category Total Income (Rs/month)

Expenditure(Rs/Month)

% of total Total Income (Rs/month)

Expenditure(Rs/Month)

% of total

<0.01 Landless 1380 2297

67.00%

4561 5108

81.83%0.01-0.4 Sub marginal 1633 2390 4152 5401

0.4-1.0 Marginal 1809 2672 5247 6020

1.0-2.0 Small 2493 3148 17.00% 7348 6457 10.00%

2.0-4.0 Semi-medium 3589 3685 10.00% 10730 7786 5.01%

4.0-10.0 Medium 5681 46266.00%

19637 10104 1.93%

>10.0 Large 9667 6418 41388 14447 0.24%

Total 2115 2770 6426 6223

Agricultural Workers (81.83%) Cultivators (18.17 %)

Percentage share of different income sources70th Round NSSO, 2014

(ha)(Rs. 4561/m Rs. 4152/m Rs. 5247/m Rs. 7348/m Rs. 10730/m Rs. 19637/m Rs. 41,388/m Rs/month)

http://www.agrariancrisis.in

What we focus on?

• Blending approaches

• Crop production FFS on

– Soil literacy

– NPM

– Water management

• Farmers institutions

• Diversifying income sources

• Financial linkages

• Value addition

• Marketing

Work with and support

various initiatives by governments

Incentivising better models for farmers

Regulating unsustainable models

Policy advocacy & influencing

Campaigns against anti-farmer technologies & policies

Advocacy in support of alternatives

Variety of strategies and tools

Studies, Documentation, Fact Finding Visits, Public Hearings, Press Releases, Lobbying, Organising visits for policy-makers to the field, Seminars & Workshops, Petitioning, Supporting court cases, Networking, Trainings, RTI data, Opinion pieces etc.

Associating with like minded people and organisations-SANET, Sustainet, SAAPE, Coalition for GM free India…

GM crops and foods• Studies on NPM vs/Bt cotton

• Documentary evidences on Violations of regulations in field trials,

• Illegal GM food crop field trials

• First reports on Bronze wilt, Tobacco Streak Virus, Mealybug

• Evidences on sheep death

• Against GM crops and foods – Coalition for GM-Free India

• Herbicide Tolerance Cotton

• GM Mustard

http://www.indiagminfo.org

On pesticides…

Studies on Pesticide Acute PoisoningEffects on Reproductive HealthPesticide Recommendations and residues in vegetables

Films on pesticide impacts-Highway to hellPublic eventsPublic hearing on pesticide poisoning

Rights based approach: Petition to NHRC on right to life

Engaging with decision making forumsUN Stockholm conference on POPs for endosulfan

Pesticide Acute Poisoning study

• 7 Hospitals Season long documentation

Non Pesticidal Management

• Establishing alternatives on large scale

• Getting local institutions involved-Women SHGs, Watershed Committees, PRIs

• Punukula –panchayat resolution

• Documentation

• NPM scalingup across the state

Impacts

• Building scientific understanding and credibility to

alternative approaches by scaling up

• Worked with various academic institutions across the

world for research

• Costs of cultivation brought down by 10% agriculture

• Productivity increased by 10 % and

• Farmers price realization by 15-20%

• Engaging on public policy issues in agriculture

Punukula, the first pesticides-free village

Yenabavi -Organic Village• Entire village (55 farmers’ 228 acres) organic for last five years• Most of the inputs internalised into farming• Land Productivity increased, crop yields maintained• In SRI paddy 44 bags were also recorded • Recently awarded Krishi Gaurav Award by Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Trust for their

role in promoting organic farming• More than 30 thousand farmers visited the village in last three years

Partnerships with Government initiatives

• State level Resource Organisation for Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh from 2005-2008

• Technical Support Organisation for supporting Farmers institutions in Maharashtra in Partnership with WIPRO 2012-14

• Technical Support Organisation for MSRLM in Maharashtra from 2015

• Technical Support Organisation for BRLF in six states from 2016

• Technical Support Organisation for NERLP for Sikkim and Tripura from 2016

Farmers and area covered under CMSA

pilot

CSA handholding support

NGOs technical support at field level

SHG groups ind. handling

Awards and Recognitions • 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

Featured in ‘Toxic Food’ episode of Satyamev Jayate

Linking farmers to markets

Organic Pesticide Free Natural

Sahaja Aharam

Producer Company Ltd

http://www.sahajaaharam.in

Sahaja Aharam Producer Company

Producer Co-op-1Farmer Group B

Retail Stores• Healthy food• Affordable Price• Max share to farmers

Mobile Store

Direct to Home

Producer Co-op-2

Other farmers and farmers groups

Farmer Group A

Farmer Group C

Sahaja Aharam Producer Company

• Capacity building• Institutional building• Investment support• Brand building• Quality Management• Fair Trade

Market placeDirect to resellers

Whole sale to traders

Bulk buyers

Processing unitsSeeds

Bioinputs

Online Store

Food processing

• Tungabhadra Coop • Kadiri Coop

• Palabavi Coop•Rayachoti coop

•Baghyalaxmi coop• Punnami Coop

• Gayatri Coop• Mydukuru Coop

• Harita Coop • Brahmalingeswara Coop

• Giri Coop

• Naisargic Sheti BeejProducer Company

• Enebavi Coop

• Adarsha Coop

• BROMACS

• Swayamkrishi PC

• Kisanmitra coop

• GreenDunia KallemHub

BoddhamHub

Naguladinne

Hub

Dorli

Hub

Coverage

• Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra

• No. of Farmers: 5000,

– Organic: 2500 (1000 ICS certified, 1500 PGS certified)

– NPM: 2500

• Cooperatives 30

• 50% of members and management are women

• Two exclusive women cooperatives

– Gayatri women organic farmers cooperative, Vempalli, Kadapa dist

– Bhagyalaxmi women farmers cooperative, Penugonda, Anantpur dist

Sahaja Aharam Stores

•Hyderabad

•Tarnaka

•Sainikpuri

•Jeedimetla

•Kharkana

•Himayatnagar

•Attapur

•Kukatpally

•Vishakapatnam

•Gopalapatnam

•MVP Colony

•Anakapalli

•Sharada nagar

•Khammam

•Burhanpur

Food processing

Key challenges

• Access to credit

– Banks demanding non agril assets as 150% collateral security

– Higher interest rates

• Higher Taxation

– VAT/CST and now GST

– 30% income tax on par with other corporates

• Lack of infrastruture

– Organic storage facilities

– Exclusive processing units to maintain identity preservation

Compost enterprise

…caring for those who feed the nationDecentralised cotton processing

INNOVATIONS…

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

Decentralised cotton spinning and weaving

Sustainable agriculture• National level trying to engage Planning commission

– Organized field visits to planning commission members-Dr. VL Chopra, Sri. BN Yugandhar

• Prime Ministers office

– Shyam Saran, India Spl envoy to IPCC

– Discussions on NMSA

• Ministers visits

– Raghuveera Reddy

– Jairam Ramesh

• Civil position paper and consultation

• Organic Farming Policies

• Scaling up of Sustainable Agriculture Policies

Workshops & Seminars…

Policy influencing….

Agrarian Crisis

• More than 3.0 lakh farmer suicides

• Immediate support and long term rehabilitation

• Pricing policy

• Tenancy issues

• Land aquisition

• Farmers income security

What we also do?Knowledge management and Support: identifying innovations, documenting successful models, developing resource material, organising trainings for building capacities on organic farming

Food processing: trainings and offering as service

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

8500 68 33 00

Market

preference

For market support register on

http://www.csa-india.org/ekrishi-market

http://www.sahajaaharam.in/ekrishi-market

eKrishi Crop Advisory

Crop menuFarmer can choose

the crop to find the

disease or send a

query through

photo/audio/video

Problem identifier

Query Photo/Video of plant

part and question in

text or audio

Problem solution

Query Expert view

Expert Response

Solution DetailsOptions

Farmer Locator

eKrishi

FPO Management

• Membership

• Share capital

• Loans

• Production and Business planning

• inventory

• Forward back word linkages

• Accounting

• Legal compliances

Knowledge Management

• Linking farmers with each other to

learn

• Diagnostic tools

• Trouble shooting

• Information about practices,

weather, processing, machinery,

subsidies, market information etc…

• Farmer level information in terms of

resources (land, water..)

• Crop information

Source Tracing

• Geo-tagging of plots

• Practices followed

• Season of harvest

• Quality standards (Organic

Certification, PGS, Good

Agricultural Practices)

• Estimated production

• Processing

• Packing

Marketing

• Online sales

• Customer Management

• Campaign

• Personalized advisory to

consumers

Custom hiring

• Farm machinery

• Skilled labor

• Food processing units

CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

http://www.csa-india.org

http://www.krishi.tv

http://www.agrariancrisis.in

eKrishi whatsapp: 083 3385 9702

Ph. 040-2701 7735, mobile : 090 0069 9702

csa@csa-india.org, Facebook: ramoo.agripage