Accelerating Farm Incomes (AFI): Building Sustainable Soil Health, Markets and Productivity in Telangana State, India: OCTOBER 2020-SEPTEMBER 2021
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2021-09
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Abstract
The development project entitled “Accelerating Farm Incomes (AFI): Building Sustainable Soil Health, Markets, and Productivity in Telangana State, India,” awarded by Walmart Foundation to International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), is a two-year and 10-month intervention that started on October 1, 2019. The project aims to strengthen and reorient agricultural production systems in peri-urban agriculture (PUA) and rural locations of Telangana State, India, through three diversified components – technology dissemination, knowledge sharing and capacity building, and micro-enterprise development – which are crucial for the sustainability of a market-driven agriculture production system. The project is expected to achieve an immediate impact in terms of improved productivity as well as increased farmers’ income through enhanced resource use efficiency and farmer-market linkages. AFI will focus on the following key issues in improving crop productivity and farmers’ income in Telangana State: • Increasing productivity by creating awareness and enhancing farmers’ knowledge of good agriculture practices (GAPs). • Ensuring introduction and adoption of site-specific technologies (seed, fertilizers, crop protection practices, and other inputs) to suit Telangana’s marginal soils, which have severe nutrient deficiencies (low nitrogen and phosphorus levels), in semi-arid/rainfed conditions. • Creating access to viable marketing pathways and sustainable opportunities for selling farmers’ produce and optimizing their income. The implementation strategy involves focusing on and strengthening the following areas: • Incorporating PUA as part of the poverty-alleviation process. • Linking targeted peri-urban poor to markets for timely sales of and obtaining a better price for agricultural products. • Empowering community, with a special emphasis on gender and youth, by providing training and advisory services for capacity building. • Disseminating climate-resilient and adaptable innovative technologies for enhancing the efficiency of natural resources (water, labor, and energy), mechanization, and quality seed use and reducing post-harvest losses for commodity groups, depending on the cropping pattern in the selected districts – rice, maize, pulse, and vegetable-based cropping systems – following the GAPs: o Improving nutrient use efficiency in rice-, vegetable-, pulse-, and maize-based cropping systems. o Enhancing balanced nutrient use (secondary and micronutrient uptake) in cereal-based cropping systems. o Improving irrigation and water use efficiency in semi-arid agriculture systems.o Introducing smallholder farmer mechanization to enhance the efficiency of energy, labor, and time, along with natural resources. • Providing commercial orientation to PUA farmers in Telangana State through the involvement of smallholder farmers, particularly by encouraging women and youth in such initiatives. • Creating awareness of the growth and demand for horticultural products (vegetables) in the metropolis of Telangana State and the potential for export opportunities with the international airport to facilitate sustainable farming and income opportunities for smallholders. The project is strengthening inter- and intra-partner relationships among stakeholders, including resource-poor farmers, private sector extension agents, agricultural input suppliers, and output buyers in the project region and beyond. The forward and backward linkages are achieving the establishment of a sustainable production system based on market demand. The project is mandated to improve the technical capacity of private sector extension agents as well as resource-poor farmers toward the effective use of technologies. Sustainable partnerships are also being developed through participatory learning processes, such as workshops, training, field days, field visits, farmer visits, and other innovative knowledge dissemination forums as web-based platforms. This progress report on Year 2 provides a detailed description of the planned activities, outputs, and outcomes achieved under the AFI project from October 2020 to September 2021. The project goal is to increase productive employment in agriculture and related enterprises through the creation of competitive but sustainable markets for stakeholders in the value chain involving agribusiness inputs, outputs, and technologies. The project vision is in line with the Walmart Foundation’s vision. The specific objectives are to:
1. Accelerate farming incomes through productive technologies focusing on soil health, seed materials, and integrated approaches to nutrient-water management, i.e., an integrated soilseed-water approach, to ensure sustainable outcomes for rice-, maize-, pulse-, and vegetable-based cropping systems in semi-arid regions of Telangana State.
2. Build thriving markets through commercial orientation of farming toward promoting periurban agriculture in Telangana State.
The AFI project is being implemented mainly in the PUA areas of three southern and central districts of Telangana – Mahabubnagar, Rangareddy, and Medak (Figure 1) to help improve farmers’ crop productivity levels, link them to sustainable markets, and thus provide opportunities for generating off-farm and on-farm employment among the farming households. The main project office was set up in Hyderabad. Two satellite offices were set up in the districts, i.e., one at Shadnagar (for Rangareddy and Mahabubnagar districts) and the other at Toopran for Medak District. Overall, 62 villages across 10 mandals were identified for the selection of beneficiaries/farmers in these three districts
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Crop production, Sustainability