Low Carbon Farming

When embarking on their Low Carbon Farming (LCF) climate project, Accion Fraterna prepared an elaborate document explaining the various step involved in project preparation. It brilliantly covers the Where, Who, Where (Again), What and How Much aspects of project preparation and monitoring requirements. Filip Tetaert, FCN Projects Officer, who was then stationed at AF, contributed with User Guide of sorts on the Tristle Monitoring Solution and Tristle Polygon Recorder to record demographic data and delineate discrete plots.

Narrative Report submitted to Icco, the Netherlands, for one year activities carried out by 4 Participant NGOs implementing Sustainable Agriculture practices under LCF

This is a document/project application that outlines a strategy, plan and budget to take Low Carbon Farming forward by giving a unified thrust and direction. We envisage that this Pan India LCF Coalition will comprise of 50 grassroots NGOs and cover 200,000 acres, contributing to an Emission Reduction of 500,000 tCO2-e every cropping season. For the moment, we will start with 8 grassroots NGOs, 13,889 Participant Farmers in 669 villages, covering 30,908 acres.

This Activity Report of the 2nd FCN-LCF Coalition covers the 6 month period till February 2012. Timbaktu Collective, WASSAN, GRAM and IIMF have made good progress also because of lessons learnt from experiences of the 1st FCN-LCF Coalition. They have a more holistic understanding of LCF as an overarching theme, and realise that is is much moe than just attracting Carbon Revenues. They are committed to take up all Main Crop(s) grown by small and marginal farmers and de-emphasise on Paddy.

Prof N.H. Ravindranath & Dr. Indu K. Murthy have prepared a document which is going to be printed by the World Bank on the issues of increasing crop yields and also sequestering carbon.

6 grasssroots NGOs across Andhra, Odisha and Chhattisghar have got together to form the 3rd FCN-LCF Coalition. This is the application they have made to Icco, the Netherlands, to support a 15 month Pilot Project

LAYA, IRDWSI, CPSW, CeFHA, ACTION and RCDRC have formed the 3rd FCN-LCF Coalition in the Tribal belt of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chhattisghar states. This Strategic Plan has been finalised by Coalition Members on 12 October 2011 at a specially convened meeting at Bagepalli.

Timbaktu Collective, GRAM, IIMF and WASSAN have formed the 2nd FCN-LCF Coalition in order to develop skills and capabilities to scale up their Sustainable Agricultue practices in the Rayalaseema and Tenlengana regions of Andhra Pradesh by accessing carbon resources. At the end of a 4 day LFA Workshop, they have brought out their Strategic Plan spelling out the Vision, Mission, Goal, Purpose and Objectives. This Strategic Plan was finally adopted at a Coalition Meeting on 5 October 2011

The 2nd FCN-LCF Coaliton, comprising Timbaktu Collective, GRAM, IIMF and WASSAN, submitted a Project Application to EED, Germany, to support the first year of a 1.5 year long Pilot Phase to enhance NGO skills and capabilities to undertake Low Carbon Farming on 48,500 acres of land belonging to 23,000 small and marginal farmer families in 277 villages. Of the total project cost of Rs 16.4 million, they requested EED for a grant of Rs 14.6 million (€ 232,416)

After an intense 2 week search by Rakesh Tiwari, Mario Esteves and Sudha Padmanabha, we finally chose a Gas Chromotograph manufactured by Thermo Fisher in Nasik, India. In this excellent paper, Rakesh Tiwari gives a semi-technical explanation on what these costly equipment are, why we need them and how we will use them in our FCN-LCF Coaliton.

Rakesh Tiwari, the LCF Expert, presented a PPT to explain the science behind the Low Carbon Farming project to the FCN-LCF Coalition on 19 April 2011 at Bagepalli. In very simple terms, he explained how Emission Reductions are calculated in Sustainable Agriculture.

18 representatives from the 5 Participant NGOs attended a day long meeting at Accion Fraterna, Anantapur. Along with many matters that were discussed, Ram Esteves presented his Audacious hypothesis on how to irrefutably prove Emission Reductions on lands under Sustainable Agriculture practices.

After a 15 month long process, 5 Participant NGOs (Accion Fraterna, SEDS, SACRED, BEST and PWDS) formally set up the FCN-LCF Coalition Programme for low carbon farming and has submitted this Project Application for € 193,413 to EED, Germany.

12 Representatives from the 5 Participant NGOs, including their leadership, attended a 2 days workshop facilitated by Ajit Mani of Interventions (India) Pvt. Ltd. to draw up a 10 year Strategic Plan for the FCN-LCF Coalition Programme. Together they listed the Core Values and underwent an exercise to articulate the Vision and Mission. After that, a Stakeholder Analysis was done and an Importance-Influence Matrix developed. A SWOT Analysis led them to derive the Strategic Priorities. Then followed the Problem Analysis and Objectives Analysis in order to construct the Trees and 4 x 4 Project Planning Matrix with Goal, Purpose, Outputs and Activity Processes. This last had already been done in great detail by the Participant NGOs, with Activity Processes, Tasks, Jobs, Costing and Source.

The Vision is of protecting the livelihoods of small and marginal Farmers, while enhancing the quality of their lives and moving into a new orbit of Sustainable Agriculture practices and Prosperity. FCN will provide leadership and blaze a trail by exploring non-traditional carbon markets and show the way to reverse and restore the damage done to their lives, livelihoods and the environment in the pursuit of High External Input Destructive Agriculture (HEIDA). This Coalition Programme will be implemented in 4 phases: 1. Pilot Phase (April 2010 to March 2011) NGO skills will be developed, Offer Sheets made and carbon revenues sourced through forward sale of these carbon offsets 2. Implementation Phase (Crop Season 2011 to 2014) Sustainable Agriculture practices will be implemented on 7,500 hectares, to generate VERs. Simultaneously, the 5 Participant NGOs will continue delineating the discrete plots of more farmers. 3. Extension (2012 to 2020) Fresh Offer Sheets will be made, carbon resources accesses, and the programme continually extended. 4. Expansion Phase (2012 to 2020) Other FCN Members will be facilitated to join the LCF Coalition.

In early 2010, the five year multidonor trust fund project "Making agriculture part of the solution to climate change – Building capacities for Agriculture Mitigation", called MICCA (Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture), started. The main goal of this project is to support efforts to mitigate climate change through agriculture in developing countries and move towards carbon friendly agricultural practices.

A new booklet “Carbon Finance Possibilities for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Projects in a Smallholder Context.” has been released by FAO. It aims to guide extension service advisors and institutions who work with small-scale farmers and foresters with an interest in carbon finance and carbon projects. Its aim is to support setting-up carbon projects which involve smallscale farmers. Their participation allows them to be involved in the development and implementation of the project, influence the design of the project to generate positive impacts for the farmers and increase their knowledge about carbon finance.

Several grassroots NGOs are in the field of promoting Sustainable Agriculture practices. The FCN has, for several years, been seeing if carbon credits generated from these activities can be sold in the VER Market. The FCN-EDF Pilot on Low Carbon Farming is to develop capacity in selected Network Members.