Venue

Arnold's Bhavan, Street no-8, Habsiguda, Hyderabad-17

Organizers

Centre for Sustainable Agriculture

About the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture

Centre for Sustainable Agriculture is a professional resource organization engaged in establishing models of sustainable agriculture working in partnership with NGOs and Community Based Organizations by scaling up the successes and engaging with the establishment for a policy change.
CSA is registered as Trust in 2004 in Hyderabad, India.

Overview

India is passing through a serious agrarian crisis. The economic, ecological, and social crisis has taken away lakhs of lives and crores of livelihoods from the rural areas. Many of the initiatives by the government in the last five years have made very little impact. In addition, the ongoing global food crisis has shattered the myths of industrial agriculture as a hope for future of the human food security.

In this background, sustainable models of agriculture which are based on sound ecological principles making effective use of local resources and natural processes are gaining importance. Across the Indian states lakhs of farmers are now switching over to adopt these agro- ecological practices to sustain their livelihoods. These initiatives are called variously as ecological farming, natural farming or organic farming based on the main focus, philosophies, clients and the driving forces.

Characterising the new revolution: The main objective of this new ecological revolution is internalising the inputs and is based on principles of the ecological farming viz.,
a) locally adopted cropping systems,
b) based on crop and genetic diversity,
c) locally adopted seed,
d) improving soil and crop ecology to have ecological balance of insects and microbes,
e) effective use of local knowledge, skills and resources.

These models evolved over a period by reinterpreting the traditional farming knowledge with modern scientific learnings and contemporary innovations. This is not just romanticisation of the past practices, as many sceptics argue.

Similarly the new generation cooperative movement have broken the traditional institutional, social and economic barriers forming new Community Based Organisations (Women Self Help Groups and their federations, producer cooperatives, common interest groups etc) which seek to empower the community to have more direct access and control over the resources. The emerging experiences show that the ecological farming models can be effectively scaled up through the CBO platforms.

About the course

The course broadly covers:

• Understanding agrarian crisis-role of practices and policies
• Sustaining farming
• Community Based Organisations-emerging experiences

The training would be in the form of lectures, discussions, case studies, interactions and field visits to organic villages and producer cooperatives.

The participants will visit the organic village, farmers’ seed cooperative.

Course fee

Rs. 10,000/-, which includes stay, food, resource material and local travel to farms and villages. (DD/Cheque in favour of CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, payable at Hyderabad).

Contact details

Chandrasekhar G
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture
12-13-445, Street No:1, Tarnaka, Secunderabad 500 017, AP, India,
Ph: 040 - 27014302 / 7735
email: training@csa-india.org