Jal-Vayu Anukulan- Creating climate-resilient farming communities in Rajasthan, India

In the project area, 80% of the total rural population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Agriculture has a high degree of sensitivity to both short-term weather changes and long-term seasonal changes and productivity is impacted by changes in temperature, precipitation and carbon dioxide levels as well as infestation by pests, diseases and weeds. Economically, it has an impact in terms of profitability, prices, supply, demand and trade. In the long run, such impacts could disturb development processes and food security.

In last few years we have also noticed that the farmers are losing a lot of money due to sudden changes in weather cycles like change in monsoon setting and withdrawal time, change in temperature, humidity etc. These weather cycles exacerbated by climate change results in crop failure, groundwater depletion, food insecurity and uncertain cash flow because farmers do not have another way of earning a living. All of this calls for an urgent need to train and prepare farmers in understanding the impact of climate on the farming and prepare hem accordingly so as to minimise its negative impact.

The overall objective of the project is to promote climate smart farming in order to lower the vulnerability of the beneficiaries to climate change impact.

Following are the specific objectives of the project:

1. Knowledge sharing: Farmers will be introduced to issues regarding climate resilient farming techniques along with knowledge of species/crops which can adapt to changing climate cycle and climate extremities. They will also be warned regarding any upcoming sudden change in cycles of climate to help them preparing in advance to tackle and minimise the losses.
2. Promotion of soil nutrient smart practices: By practicing integrated nutrient management, help farmers to test their soil and apply fertilizer / compost as pe the crop selected by farmers.
3. Promotion of water smart practices: Train farmers about water management, soil and water conservation and rainwater harvesting, recharging ground water etc.
4. Introduction of package of practices: We will roll out standard package of practices which farmers can adopt as immediate measure to tackle the adverse effects of climate change.
5. Capacity building of the farmers: Capacity building of farmers by conducting continuous meetings, trainings, workshops etc.
6. Integration of technology: to ensure that the efficiency of our efforts will be maximised, we will be introducing concepts like service on call and use of climate smart applications to help the community in best possible way. This all can be done in due course of our expansion.

The project is intended to lower the vulnerability of the rural population by providing those means of adaptation to climate change impacts. The project will adopt activities which have already been recognized by Indian Council of Agricultural Research to be village level interventions towards climate resilient agriculture. 

Some of the activities proposed under the project are Community mobilization and selection of farmers, Briefing and ice breaking with farmers,Training of farmers and capacity building, Exposure visit (modern farm, KVK, IARI, Agri Tech Fairs etc) to best practices, Soil health card and Kisan Credit Card, Introduction of service on call concept,Introduction of mobile application etc

The proposed project will cover aound 300 small and marginal farmers from Tijara block of Alwar district of Rajasthan.

1. Provision of strategic climate change adaptation services through knowledge assimilation.This can be done by creating awareness and building capacity to deal with impact of climate change thus minimizing the negative impact of climate change on farming.
2. Implementation of climate adaptation interventions in agriculture by community institutions
3. Scaling and mainstreaming community-based climate adaptation component will enable support and build capacity for the implementation of climate adaptation by fellow villagers hence a snow balling impact can lead to horizontal scaling of the programme.
4. Farmers will have sustainable livelihood through farming as a result of adopting scientific climate resilient farming.