Best Practices in Sustainable Agriculture

Results

The results of the 2010 Sitaram Rao Livelihoods India Case Study Competition are finally out!

Top 3 Cases:
1. BAIF: Transforming dreams into reality for rural India
2. Fishing for Innovation - The story of Samudaram Women's Federation, Orissa
3. Weaving strength with SUTA

The other cases that made it to the top 10:
• Aggregation of Traditional Fisherfolk in Gujarat Coast: Kutch Seafood Producer Group
• Chetna Organic: Environment…ethics…equilibrium
• Chirag's Market Linkage Program for Small & Marginal Farmers
• Enabling Aggregation through Institutional Framework for Farmers: Poompuhar Farmers Federation Model
• Enterprising Farmers forming Farmer Enterprises
• Fostering Farmers Organization with Business Rigour
• The power of Aggregation in Agriculture: A case study from Udyogini

Congratulations to all the winners! We will shortly contact all of you with further details.

Those whose cases did not make it to the top 10, please do not be disheartened. We will be sending you one invite each to attend the Livelihoods India Conference 2010. We will get in touch with your shortly.

Overview

Best Practices in Sustainable Agriculture
Kolkata | July 28 & 29, 2011

NABARD has undertaken many initiatives for promoting sustainable agriculture. The Regional Offices, CBOs, PIAs have also innovated locally depending on the local requirements. However, this vast knowledge base is not always tapped for sharing and dissemination in a systematic way. Outside NABARD also there are many successful experiments, models on sustainable agriculture practices. One of the mandates of NRMC is to identify such models and facilitate their replication.

With this objective, ACCESS Development Services, in collaboration with the Natural Resource Management Center, NABARD, is conducting a writeshop on 28 & 29 July, 2011 in Kolkata, to showcase how sustainable agriculture practices have impacted the livelihoods of the poor. The writeshop also intends to develop a strategy and action plan for furthering the agenda of sustainable agriculture (sustainable agriculture could include crop husbandry, animal husbandry, fisheries, integrated models/ farming systems etc.).

Sitaram Rao Livelihoods India Case Study Competition 2010 - Shortlisted Abstracts

S.No.	ABSTRACT TITLE	SUBMITTED BY
1	Retailing - A Signpost as a Business Metric for a Cooperative - HOPCOMS	Mr. Debashish, Maitra
2	Fostering Farmers Organisations	Mr. L P Semwal
3	Environment - Ethics - Equilibrium	Mr. Siddarth Tripathy
4	SRIJAN's Soy Samriddhi Initiative: A Multi-Pronged Approach towards leveraging the Power of Farmers' Collectives	Ms. Priyanka Parmar
5	Seed to Market	Ms. Anita Rana
6	Agribusiness Micro franchises of Tribal Women Entrepreneurs: The case of Ujas	Ms. Vanita Viswanath
7	Mushrooming opportunities in Darlaghat	Mr. Vishal Bhardwaj
8	Harvesting technology for farming	Mr. Savitha suresh
9	Aggregation of Traditional Fisher folk in Gujarat Coast	Mr. D.Yeswanth
10	The Role of Agricultural Cooperatives for sustainable Agriculture : A case study of Heigrujam Gram Panchayat Level Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd.	Mr. Khundrakpam Bobby Singh
11	Dharamrajupalli Seed Cooperative	Mr. Papori
12	Facilitating Remunerative Market Access to Subsistence Producers: A case study of GRISERV - BAIF	Mr. Bhavani Shankar
13	BAIF : Transforming Dreams into Reality for Rural India	Ms. Raji M Ajwani
14	Endogenous development from indigenous systems: A Case on Krishi Prayoga Pariwara	Mr. Megha Y
15	Improving the livelihoods of 5,000 small salt producers across Gujarat.	Mr. Rajesh Shah
16	Weaving Strength with 'Suta'	Mr. Sushanta Kumar sharma
17	Buds of Hope: Promoting Livelihoods through floriculture in Mizoram	Mr. Barna Baibhabha Panda
18	Centre for Collective Development	Mr. Maitree Mukerji
19	Creating Stakeholders, Not Beneficiaries in business	Mr. Kailash Iyer
20	Broiler Poultry Farming- A Source of Income for Poorest of Poor	Mr. Jitendra Kumar Nayak
21	System of Sugar Intensification	Malay Harsha
22	Wastage to usage towards a New Green Revolution	SATHIABAMA.K
23	Fishing For Innovation: The Women Entrepreneurs of Samudram	Mr. Joseph Satish .V
24	"Vindhya Valley - Bringing Prosperity into the lives of deprived	Mr. Vidhi
25	Farmers Producer Cooperative Society: A suitable institutional arrangement for small scale farmers	Mr. Sandeep Khanwalkar
26	Enabling Institutional Infrastructure for Farmers: Poombuhar Farmers Federation Model	Ms. Kottaisamy.P
27	Use of Aggregation to empower farmers by TATA chemicals ltd.	Mr. Stabak Ghosh & Soumalya paul
28	Pot-in-Pot Aggregation	Mr. Harvinder Sodhi
29	Nature Fresh Milk	Dr. G.S.MADHU
30	Redefining Agri-Marketing - A Rural market linkage program by CHIRAG	Mr.Triveni, Sati

The final cases have to be submitted via email to casecomp@accessdev.org by the 5th of September, 2010.

Participants

The writeshop is an all India event, and everyone can send in their case studies.
The participants for the two day writeshop will be invited depending upon the shortlisted cases looking into the replicability aspect from CBOs, NGOs, NABARD, Farmers Clubs, academic institutions, KVKs, Govt. agencies etc. A total of about 100 persons will participate in the writeshop (about 30 resource persons and 70 participants)

Expected Outcome

Identification of successful best practices and their documentation
Sharing and facilitation of replication of the identified models/ practices

Scouting and Upscaling Rural Livelihoods Innovations in Orissa
Bhubaneswar | February 23, 2011

ACCESS organized a retreat on Scouting and Upscaling Rural Livelihoods Innovations in Orissa in February, 2011 where several bureaucrats, CSOs and practitioners participated. A compendium of cases on innovations has been brought out as an outcome of this Retreat, in addition to a report on the proceedings of the workshop.

23 different cases were received from organizations and institutions, all of them capturing different innovations. Cases ranged from innovations in poultry farming to community farming and fishery products; from eco tourism to integrated natural resource management; from technological innovations in cashew to formation of vegetable cooperatives; and many more.

Download the Workshop Proceedings.
Download the compendium of the best 15 cases. Coming Soon!

Case Protocol

Participants who will be submitting Case Studies need to keep the following points in mind. However, these are just broad guidelines and need to be adapted to the Case Study according to the participant.

INTRODUCTION

The introduction should include a paragraph highlighting the present scenario of the subject of the Case Study Project (Organization/person). The context of the project should also be specified and since when has it been in existence

THE RELEVANCE OF THE CASE TO THE THEME

How can it be explicitly stated that the study espouses the theme "Power of aggregation: Poor in agriculture"

THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF THE CASE

Under this, the following themes can be looked into:

1) People

Why did people aggregate, what were the reasons which prompted this? What is the advantage from aggregation that the group didn't avail of earlier?

2) Organization/ Intervening Agency

How did the Organisation decide this as best course of action, what was the catalyst idea and who was the catalyst? Did it fit with their mission? Approach?
What is the form of the organization? Its governance structure?
Is there any element of PP partnership involved?

3) Human Resources

What was the investment on HR involved in this process? Did the community participate as beneficiaries or stakeholders in the process? Did the aggregation happen on the impetus of the community or the organization?
Community studied-did they have access to land and forests? Education levels? Health conditions? Gender practices? Presence or absence of entrepreneurial spirit? Openness to outsiders and new ideas? What was the level of economic activity within the locale and its interface with the market? Incidence of petty business? Incidence of small enterprises? Sale of farm produce to dealers in high volumes? Services for agricultural sector such as input dealers and market agents?
How did these socio-economic, cultural and economic characteristics of the people and the locale influence the interventions choice? Why?
Does the intervention plan given attention to bringing changes in these characteristics?

4) Social Resources

How did the social relations and institutions influence the livelihood opportunities of the communities?
Does the impact of the intervention include changes in this sphere of social relations either directly or in an indirect fashion?

5) Physical Resources

How is the availability or lack of infrastructure providing opportunities/imposing barriers for promoting livelihoods? Irrigation infrastructure? Road and Rail connectivity? Telecommunication and Transportation facilities? Power supplies? Social infrastructure such as educational institutes and hospitals? Market infrastructure such as warehouses, cold storage facilities for perishable goods? Or any other?
How does the intervention plan to negotiate/has overcome these bottlenecks in achieving its objectives?

6) Financial Resources

What are the institutions (formal and/or informal) of credit available in the locale and for the target community in particular? Banks? MFIs? Moneylenders? Social networks? Government subsidies?
Did the intervention work to alleviate the bottlenecks in the credit market in order to achieve its objectives? How? Subsidized credit from grants? Establish MFI? Promote SHGs? Demand Disbursement to Poor by nationalised banks and/or other public commercial lending institutions? Linkage with Govt. subsidized program etc?

THE IMPACT AND OUTREACH

What is the envisioned impact of the intervention? Will it affect a miniscule or a large section of the population of the area?

THE SUSTAINABILITY ASPECT

What are the threats to the sustainability?
How is the target intervention building on these/using these to promote opportunities for the target community?
Is the intervention sustainable from a business point of view?

THE REPLICABILITY

To what extent is this intervention replicable in other contexts/ geography/ target population in India? Will it help organizations/communities in improving their own models / of interventions?

THE INNOVATIVENESS

To what extent is the intervention innovative in the Indian context? What is the unique feature/aspect of the project/initiative? What is the value added idea - Does it bring to practice and discourse totally new inputs or is it a modification of previous successful ideas?

KEY INSIGHTS

Any additional insight that the participant can share to bring a managerial perspective to this Case Study, such as

Problems faced during the intervention and the action taken to solve these problems and any suggestions for individuals who want to replicate this livelihood initiative.
Scale aspects
Cost efficiency
Time period taken to come up with the model and innovation

Process

As a precursor to the writeshop, resource persons from practicing organizations will be invited to send in detailed papers in about 3000 words, highlighting how sustainable agriculture practices promoted by them have helped in furthering ecological (issues relating to soil fertility, water, biodiversity, pollution, landscape and climate), economic (employment, market, credit and risk) and social sustainability (issues related to inclusiveness, local acceptance, indigenous knowledge, gender, food security, participation etc.).
Cases would be invited through ACCESS�s regional offices, various networks, postings on websites of NABARD, NRMC and ACCESS etc.
These would then be adjudged on predetermined criteria by a panel of eminent judges drawn from NABARD, sector experts, ACCESS Development Services, among others.
The top cases would be invited to present their papers in a two day writeshop before a larger audience.
While the first day of the writeshop will focus on presentations of best practices, the second day will deliberate on the challenges of scaling up sustainable agriculture practices to influence the livelihoods of the poor at scale, assess the likely roles of different stakeholders and develop a plan for furthering the agenda of sustainable agriculture within the country.
The writeshop will be held in a consultative and participative mode.

Objectives

The overall objectives of the writeshop include:

Showcase how sustainable agriculture practices have impacted the livelihoods of the poor
Create and share knowledge around sustainable agriculture practices
Deliberate on the challenges of scaling up sustainable agriculture practices to influence the livelihoods of the poor at scale
Emphasize on the need to identify, support and scale up such practices
Assess the likely roles of different stakeholders
Develop a plan for furthering the agenda of sustainable agriculture within the country

Themes

Case studies are solicited on the following themes:

Improvement of existing production systems (e.g. altered crop rotations, introduction of green manuring, use of plant species adapted to specific locations)
Improved protection of natural resources (e.g. erosion protection)
Increase in efficiency of existing resources (e.g. irrigation, use of technology, basic and advanced training)
Introduction of regenerative branches of business (e.g. horticulture or aquaculture)
Introduction of a new production element in existing enterprises (such as fruit trees to stabilize terraced fields, fish-farming in rice fields)
Optimization of post-harvest systems (e.g. storage)
Increase the value of agricultural products through further processing
Improvement of channels of distribution (e.g. market access)
Access to loans and other financial services
Covering risk (e.g. through land law, support of producer groups)

Structure of the papers / case studies

Introduction
What is the innovative / best practice or the model?
Increase in efficiency of existing resources (e.g. irrigation, use of technology, basic and advanced training)
What are the success criteria in the given context / background information?
Process adopted
Institutions involved
Problems / issued faced
How they were overcome?
How to replicate?
Word limit: 3000

Selection Criteria

Focus: The practices must have focus on small and marginal farmers and clearly support strategies to address environmental and social concerns.
Community Empowerment: The innovation must demonstrate strong bias to promote socio-economic empowerment of poor.
Applicability: The practices should have direct relevance to the livelihoods of rural poor communities.
Replicability: It should reflect the ability of the approaches to adapt innovations in various rural settings in a cost effective manner.
Scalability: The practices must have ability to expand in terms of geographical reach.
Impact: The approach should have long term results and potential impact in terms of social, economic and environmental benefits derived by the communities or individuals.
Sustainability: The practices must have ensured ecological, economic and social sustainability.

Checklist

The paper / case studies should include

Title of the paper
Name of author / agency
Complete address
Contact numbers
E-mail address
State / location where the case being documented has been implemented

Jury

To be announced soon.

Awards

First Prize: Rs. 1,00,000
Second Prize: Rs. 75,000
Third Prize: Rs. 50,000
Best 10 entries (including the top 3) will be given citations.
The best 10 will be invited to the Livelihoods India Conference to be held on December 14 & 15, 2011 at New Delhi.
A compendium of the 10 best cases will be released at the Conference.

Rules

All entries should be submitted in English.
The case study must not exceed 5000 words (excluding tables).
All entries should be submitted in a word document, with font Times New Roman (size: 12), line spacing (1.5) and margins (1� on all sides).
All submitted cases must be accompanied by a scanned or hard copy of the declaration form, with the signature of the authors..
The cases should pertain to experiences which are at least 3 years old.
The cases documented must relate to an Indian experience.
All cases must be based on real life situations.
Applicants should avoid cases already written about extensively.
In the event that the case being documented is based on a practice of any institution/ organization, the applicant must take written permission from the concerned institution/ organization and provide a copy of the same.
The case must be unpublished at the day of submission and should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere, even in a slightly modified form.
All cases submitted will be the copyright of ACCESS Development Services and may be published as a compendium/ book with due acknowledgement to the author(s).
All entries will be screened for plagiarism.
The veracity of the cases may be checked.
The decision of the Jury will be final and binding.

Timeline

Activities	Timeline
Submission of papers by agencies/ individuals	05 June, 2011
Screening and selection of cases	20 June, 2011
Last date of revisiting the paper, if required	30 June, 2011
Writeshop	28-29 July, 2011
Release of publication	28 July, 2011

Forms

The registration and declaration forms can be downloaded here.

Registration Form
Declaration Form

Further Information

For further details please contact:

NRMC, Kolkata at nrmc.nabkol@gmail.com, 033-22290865
Rajesh Meena, AM, NRMC � 09339767095, rajesh.meena@nabard.org
Alok Kumar Sahu, Manager, ACCESS � 09433355568, aloks@accessdev.org