IFPRI - ICAAP Project to Provide Global Agricultural Advisory Services to Small and Marginal Farmers

896 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on rice cultivation

IFPRI - ICAAP project to provide global agricultural advisory services to small and marginal farmers

International Food Policy Research institute, Washington DC and ICAAP (IKP Centre for Advancement in Agricultural practice) joined together to establish global agricultural knowledge facility through information and communication technology (ICT) in India. The project aims to establish an interactive internet-based platform for facilitating knowledge and experience sharing between the various agri-stakeholders (including men and women farmers, extension agents, agricultural scientists, agro-industries, agri-financing institutions, policymakers and planners).

To kick start the project, being piloted in Thanjavur and Thiruvarur districts, we visited the locations to understand existing agricultural extension systems in the region, needs and demands of stakeholders in accessing scientific information through various channels. To explore the probable entry points to pilot IFPRI - ICAAP knowledge portal in the locality, we interacted with knowledge intermediaries like extension professionals, KVK (Farm science centre), agricultural research station, civil society organizations, KGFS, farmers associations and small and marginal farming community.

Agriculture scenario at Thanjavur and Thiruvarur districts

Rice and Rice fallow pulses i.e. black gram and green gram and oilseeds i.e. Gingelly, groundnut (Rainfed crop) are the dominant crops in Thanjavur and Thiruvarur districts. Most of the farmers depend on Cauvery water to meet their farming activities. In some of the areas, progressive farmers grow sugarcane and banana by using bore-well water as annual crop.

Recently, the stagnation in growth of rice productivity was noti...

... middle of paper ...

...n the new rural economy.

Knowledge intermediaries

• Extension agents and subject matter specialist in an ideal world would resemble knowledge brokers. They need to articulate the demand of farmers for knowledge, facilitate linkages between stakeholders with ideas and resources and manage the knowledge process.

• Extension worker lacks ability to handhold the stakeholders who are involved in the crop value chain and lacks relationship skills with the farming community until the end product.

IFPRI-ICAAP will join with above local stakeholders to implement the project and bring the innovative and sustainable model to provide comprehensive advisory services to the small and marginal farmers and link them with the market for profit realization.

Senthil Kumar Govindararajan, Project Coordinator, IFPRI and can be reached s.govindarajan@cgiar.org

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Stuffed And Starved

    2185 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...struggling to earn any income at all and sometimes do not even get the opportunity to eat. Another issue that Raj Patel did not touch on is the lack of care consumers have for the farmers. It seems that consumers care about farmers about as much as the corporations do, which, in my opinion, is not a lot. When consumers only care about low prices and large corporations only care about making a profit, the farmers are left out to dry. Many consumers believe “food should be available at a bargain price, a belief that relies on labor exploitation and environmental exhaustion at multiple points along the commodity chain.” (Wright, 95) Corporations as well as consumers generally tend to be selfish and I think Raj Patel is afraid to mention this. If only these people cared a little bit more about each other I believe the hourglass of the food system will begin to even out.

    Read More

  • Sustainable Development: The Benefits Of Sustainable Agriculture

    1884 Words  | 4 Pages

    Agriculture requires the dedication of many of our natural resources, including land, water, and energy. When the quality and quantity of our natural resources degrades as a result of unsustainable practices, it’s not only the environment that suffers–the viability of future agricultural operations is also put at risk. Sustainable agriculture is founded on the premise that our resources can be carefully managed and cultivated to make them last indefinitely.

    Read More

  • AGRO435 Midterm Exam

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    Since humans started farming thousands of years ago crop and livestock production systems have been integrated. Integration of crop and livestock systems enhanced profitability and environmental sustainability of farms and communities. (Russelle, Michael P., Martin H. Entz, and Alan J. Franzluebbers) Crop and livestock systems have always went hand and hand, that is, until the 19th century when farming became specialized resulting in separation of crop and livestock enterprises. Unfortunately crop and livestock enterprise integration is not nearly as common as it once was in this region. But today there are still many farmers who choose integrate crop and livestock enterprises. There are also local specialized crop and livestock farmers who work together and integrate their farms in order to receive some of the benefits of crop and livestock integration.

    Read More

  • Precision Agriculture Essay

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the rise as with the technology, challenges for farmers are growing too as earlier growers had to have knowledge in agronomics, risk management, marketing their products and it has become even more competitive with the surge in new precision agricultural practices and products. The growers have to tone their IT skills in order to run their day to day life, analyze the enormous amount of data to optimize the operations and be up to date with the current trends and the competition in the market.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Agripreneurship In Agriculture

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    A shift from agriculture to agribusiness is an essential pathway to revitalize Indian agriculture and to make more attractive and profitable venture. Agripreneurship have the potential to contribute to a range of social and economic development such as employment generation, income generation, poverty reduction and improvements in nutrition, health and overall food security in the national economy. Agripreneurship has potential to generate growth, diversifying income, providing widespread employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in rural areas. Agripreneurship is greatly influenced mainly by the economic situation, education and culture. This paper mainly focused on basic concepts of agripreneurship, entrepreneurship skills, and needs of

    Read More

  • Plowing New Soil with World Agriculture

    2600 Words  | 6 Pages

    Farming has become a highly complex and competitive business. Today's farmers must be a careful businessmen as well as a trained agriculturist. Today in society, there is now the need to understand and use economics, marketing, and several other business-related fields in addition to having a knowledge of agronomy, animal husbandry, breeding techniques, and other fields traditionally related to agriculture.

    Read More

  • Define Agricultural Education Essay

    2023 Words  | 5 Pages

    We need to reach people and communicate and this is something that an agricultural educator should be capable of doing. Agriculture impacts everyone, every day whether they realize it or not. Agricultural Education is not restricted to one age group or one area. Education can occur at any age and any stage of education so therefore we have to be able to adapt to cater to our audience. It is also not restricted to a teacher in agriculture. An agricultural educator can be anybody from someone who works in the industry communicating with a co-worker or a student talking to someone on the bus about agriculture. Even an educator in agriculture can learn something new from another educator.

    Read More

  • Sustainable Agriculture: The Environmental And Environmental Impact Of Agriculture

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    Introduction Agriculture has changed tremendously, especially this 21st century after the end of World War II. As a result of population growth and world agricultural increase in food demand, productivity soared with the aid of new technologies, mechanization, increased synthetic chemical use, specialization and government policies that favored maximizing agricultural production. Although these changes have had positive effects and reduced many risks in farming, there have also been negative impacts. Prominent among these are like topsoil depletion, groundwater contamination as a result of land over use, decline of family farms, continued neglect of the living and working conditions for farm laborers, low wages for the laborers, increasing

    Read More

  • Food Crisis In Malaysia

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...or the government and private organizations always provide all the facilities or capital needed to help smallholder farmers around the world climb out of food crisis. Therefore, an effective training that designed based on the detailed local knowledge able to facilitate farmers to gain high productivity, high resilience to crisis and adequate literacy level particularly amongst the rural farmers to combat such raised issue. This is because the trained farmers will be equipping with survival skill and knowledge to handle the crises and changing factors that lower their farm product’s yields and competitive value. Further investment on smallholder farmers either by government or private sector also should be encouraged in order to transform the smallholder into commercial growers which own better production efficiency and advanced technologies than the previous one.

    Read More

  • Rising Food Prices

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...earch and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers. Rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades, and now is the time to reverse this trend. Farmers in many developing countries are operating in an environment of inadequate infrastructure like roads, electricity, and communications; poor soils; lack of storage and processing capacity; and little or no access to agricultural technologies that could increase their profits and improve their livelihoods. Recent unrest over food prices in a number of countries may tempt policymakers to put the interests of urban consumers over those of rural people, including farmers, but this approach would be shortsighted and counterproductive. Given the scale of investment needed, aid donors should also expand development assistance to agriculture, rural services, and science and technology.

    Read More

  • Agricultural Policy

    1183 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many planners on expanding South Asian farm production through irrigation have placed great hopes. A constant water supply could permit the growing of more than one crop a year, if the peasants were willing to work that hard. Broadl...

    Read More

  • Pluralistic Extension System

    654 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are several reasons why pluralistic extension system is required. One of the reasons is that previous single provider of extension system, mainly Training and Visit (T&V system) was criticized for its limited advantages. As the case in India, the T&V system was blamed for only boosting commodity and supply-driven but not generate income. It was also criticized as the cause of the fall of commodity price, disintegration among sub-sectors, and poor focus on farmer organization development (Singh & Swanson, n.d.). Former extension system was occasionally considered as inefficient, having unclear and incompatible objectives of state intervention, vague rules for implementation; it also provides limited incentive for extension workers, and lack of financial transparency (Rivera & Alex, 2004). Moreover, the pluralistic extension system is expected to reduce financial burden of national government due to large institutional structures and perceived ineffectiveness of former extension system (Swanson & Rajalahti, 2010). Earlier extension system was also blamed for not giving much attention in involving farmers to define and solve their own problems, while having poor linkage of extension-research-farmer system (Davis, 2008). The support of farmers’ group as possessing power for extension provider comes from Davis’ research in Kenya (n.d.), in which she found that farmers’ groups were considered by local farmers as credible source of agricultural information provider (Davis, n.d.)

    Read More

  • Sustainable Development Goals

    1446 Words  | 3 Pages

    They aim to do this by creating more jobs with efficient training and preserving the environment by using less water, land, energy and pesticides. By 2030, global agricultural production systems should shift from industrial to sustainable through replacing herbicides and pesticides with organic alternatives. Food should be sold locally before it is exported if the community is experiencing hunger or malnutrition. They aim to increase the food supply chain efficiency by 20% which will reduce food waste. Increase water efficiency used in agriculture by 20% which will provide more nutrition with less water. As well as using irrigation technology that only waters areas that need to be irrigated, which will preserve more water. In order to achieve the above points, there are strategies that can be implemented to ensure this goal is reached. More assistance is needed from more developed countries, focusing on agricultural methods. Increasing the funds that small farm holders receive which can help to implement more efficient farming practices and in turn, promote local production. Support sustainable agriculture through policies and government legislation (United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development ,

    Read More

  • Importance Of Food Accessibility

    1654 Words  | 4 Pages

    This can be enhanced through promoting small holder production mostly in rural areas. In Chivi, emphasis must be given to small grains production due to their ability to survive in harsh conditions. Chivi District is characterised with recurrent droughts and rainfall variability which has consistently reduced agricultural production in the area and resulted in high levels of food insecurity. The production of finger millet in Chivi has increased food accessibility to those farmers who have adopted this production. Finger millet and sorghum are drought resistant crops and this has made them to be more preferable in dry and hot areas like Chivi. Farmers that produce small grains harvest better even in bad seasons and this will promote their food security. Households that produce small grains, food accessibility is within their reach. This shows that small grain farmers can no longer go without food as compared to farmers who produce

    Read More

  • Ict In Agriculture And Agriculture

    1732 Words  | 4 Pages

    During fieldwork we came to know that the modern day technology which were invented with the purpose of helping farmers in the work, have not been completely successful but also this doesn’t means that they have failed absolutely. To some extent it has helped farmers to improve their standard of living as compared to the

    Read More

More about IFPRI - ICAAP Project to Provide Global Agricultural Advisory Services to Small and Marginal Farmers

Open Document