Sustainable Agriculture
With sustainable agriculture is far from mainstream in India, with most sustainable agricultural practices being practised by less than four per cent of all farmers, CCD is committed towards doing its own bit.
Use of fertilizers, pesticides is resulting in soil degradation and causing health hazards for the farmers and the consumers. This is an issue at multiple levels.
As part of its counter measures, CCD is taking initiative to focus on sustainable farming where the
use of organic inputs is maximized and at the same time, methods are used to market the sustainable food through channels that prioritize the same.
In Puttaparthi, a 78-acre plot has been taken on lease that will demonstrate a range of farming methods including the use of drip irrigation, the use of materials such as hydro-gels and rain-fed agriculture to demonstrate, how it would be possible to increase yields even under rain-fed conditions for small farmers.
Other changes that will be demonstrated include different kinds of input seeds that have been already tried in Adilabad, changing the spacing of crops to improve the exposure to sun and therefore cause increases in yield per acre as well as a decrease in cost of inputs per acre.
Some of the activities that would be conducted to increase awareness and the spread of sustainable agriculture include:
- Create farmer demonstration plots in villages around the districts to demonstrate sustainable techniques in organic farming.
- Provide input support to supply organic seed, fertilizers and pesticide inputs through an input shop.
- Create local market linkages for outputs from farms that practice sustainable agriculture.
- Create strong local awareness of non- pesticide management as well as organic farming through farmer meetings and trainings.
- Create linkages with government schemes (where possible) to increase organic and bio – dynamic farming.