Learning Exchanges – FOLU and RESILIENCE team at Ganjam District in Odisha

The Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) and RESILIENCE projects team members had an interaction to exchange their learning experiences in building the sustainable food systems on 18th April 2022. The team interacted with the men and women farmers, scientists of KVKs of Ganjam-1 and 2, researchers of OUAT and developmental professionals of M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation at Chikrada and Chandapur villages in Ganjam district. The team explained how both the technological and social systems are facilitated to enhance the resilience capacity at the levels of individual, community and institutions.

The RESILIENCE project team demonstrated how the capacity building efforts have been facilitated using a set of diverse digital tools. Voice mails, Helpline services, Audio advisories, Audio and Video conferences, Video based learning, Social media – Whatsapp and Plant Clinics are the main tools have been localized to improve the knowledge and skills of women and men farmers on different climate adaptation technologies. The team demonstrated how the tools are working and how the contents are developed, localized and validated in partnership with technical institutions and partners including KVK. Besides, the interventions strengthen the horizontal network among men and women farmers to promote farmer to farmer learning.

The adaptation technologies have been promoted at the production and post production levels with backward and forward linkages for its adoption. The important production level technologies promoted to improve their adaptive capacity are introduction of flooding and drought tolerant varieties, diversification of cropping systems including pulses and other commercial crops to improve cropping intensity, short duration crops as contingency crops, rice fallow pulses, intensification through intercropping and relay cropping in irrigated systems,  green manuring/cover crops, biofertilizers and vermi-composting to improve soil organic matter and reduce the use of Nitrogen fertilizers, soil test based integrated nutrient management to lower the chemical fertilizer application and increase nutrient use efficiency,  mixed cropping model for irrigation management, sprinkler and drip systems for water management, poly-mulch vegetable cultivation to reduce weed issues, trellis method of vegetable cultivation especially gourds,  smart tools to address the wild boar damage (solar and sound system based), agro-forestry, solar based light traps to monitor the insect pests, pheromone and sticky traps for insect pest management, trap crops and creating access to reliable pest diagnostic and advisory systems through plant clinics, diversified enterprises like paddy straw mushroom production, goatry, apiculture etc.

It also, promoted some of the backward and forward linkages to services such as accessing seeds, farm machinery through agro-service centres, storage facility for vegetables (zero energy cold storage units), aggregation of produces for marketing especially for vegetables, paddy and pulses through community-based institutions namely farmer producer organization. Such technology based solutions embedding with collective actions through community based institutions, capacity building and expanding institutional linkages impacted their adaptive capacity to increasing climate risks in the region.