Eleven people give an insight into their joys, their worries and their personal values in the environment of organic cotton production. The series "Faces of Organic Cotton" shows a new portrait every week until mid-December. It was created as part of FiBL Switzerland's SysCom (Farming Systems Comparison in the Tropics)...

Conflicts over fishing gear have again erupted along the Coromandel Coast of India, pointing to the urgent need for effective management. In August, 2021 tensions escalated in the state of Tamil Nadu along India’s southeastern coast when an altercation between fishers at sea led one to be hospitalized with serious injuries....

The future of sustainable fisheries around the world does not lie merely in the scale of operations but in the artisanal attitude and its attendant culture. This is the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022). From a quick survey of the website of the Food and Agriculture Organization...

This blog, in the backdrop of World Radio Day, highlights the instrumental role Community Radio Alfaz-e-Mewat FM 107.8 played during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a country as vast and diverse as India, inclusion can only be achieved by strengthening communication that serves the people at the bottom of the pyramid,...

Since its launch in 2018, the Scaling up Agroecology Initiative seeks to mobilize dialogue, cooperation and investment within and beyond the UN system, to bring agroecology to scale and achieve multiple sustainable development goals through sustainable agriculture and food systems. Different UN Agencies are progressively supporting agroecology across their respective...

Every year in September, during ‘India Nutrition Week,’ nutritionists, health gurus, development professionals, chefs, and other food and nutrition experts converge across the subcontinent to discuss and promote the benefits of a balanced diet for a healthy lifestyle. While malnutrition rates have dropped significantly in India over the past decades,...

The documentary film Unseen Faces, Unheard Voices showcase the impacts of the boom in aquaculture on women in the floodplain regions of the Indian coastal state of West Bengal. Shot in the remote villages of Purba Medinipur, the film makes a pitch to policy makers, researchers and institutions to adopt...

The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) Trust organized a national workshop on the SSF Guidelines and Women in Fisheries, India at Asha Nivas Social Service Centre, Chennai, India, on April 8-10, 2022. There were sixtyone participants from five coastal states of Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West...

India’s rural economy, largely dependent on rainfed agriculture, is increasingly vulnerable to climate change. More frequent, intense heatwaves and unpredictable rains undermine farmers’ efforts to protect crops and sustain their families. In 2021, to support communities to cope with crises, ‘CRISP-M’ was launched: an accessible online tool that helps communities...

Diseases need to be cured; this is true for people, animals and plants. In plant protection, fungicides are probably more readily seen as acceptable than insecticides, which are well known to harm the ecosystem, bees, birds and people.

Aquaculture is the new sunrise sector with respect to ­fish production. Developing countries of Asia are the world leaders, with a large population dependent on the sector. Though a plethora of literature is available on aquaculture, there is a lacuna with regards to speci­fic studies on the human rights aspects...

Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy formally inaugurated the Indo German Global Academy for Agroecology, Research and Learning (IGGAARL) in Pulivendula constituency of Kadapa district on Thursday. The academy is a fallout of the joint effort between the Federal Government of Germany and the Government of India to strengthen the...

Case studies from India highlight the vital but little-recognised role that women play as fishers. It is now acknowledged that women account for 50 per cent of the workforce in fisheries and aquaculture, especially when we take into account their work in post-harvest activities like processing and trading. The findings of...

An article titled Training videos on agroecology – Putting the power of learning in farmers’ hands, which throws spotlight on how Access Agriculture (www.accessagriculture.org) helps scale agroecology across the Global South, has just been published in the June 2022 edition of LEISA India magazine (Issue 24.2).  To read the full article,...

The idea emerged as an outcome of Founder, Arshiya Bose’s doctoral research project. A human geographer, Arshiya completed her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, in the UK, on market incentives for conserving biodiversity – she used certification for coffee as a case study. Her research proposed that there was...

Smallholder farmers in India face considerable challenges in terms of market access. The Indian government supports farmer producer companies (FPCs) as a legal-institutional innovation to achieve market benefits for small-scale farmers. FPCs have key agency-enhancing features that distinguish them from India’s traditional cooperative legal structure, but they also demonstrate weaknesses...

As the conservation of marine resources becomes a growing global priority, the concept of marine protected areas (MPAs) is being widely propagated. Since most MPAs are located in coastal areas of great biodiversity, their development has direct relevance and concern to the livelihoods, culture and survival of small-scale and traditional...

Women in the Andean highlands of Cocapata, Bolivia, play a leading role in re-establishing peasant ways of farming, while building innovative connections with urban people. In doing so, they are creating agricultural systems that not only nourish the community and its natural resources but that also support vulnerable populations in...

Secondary agriculture offers a viable option of doubling the farmers’ income and also making agriculture competitive.Functional expansion of hitherto traditional agriculture can be a potential way to increase the income of the farmers, particularly those who are small, landless, and dependent on natural resources like forests for their sustenance. Besides...

Family farms produce 80 percent of world’s food from 70.80 percent of farm land. By 2050 food grain production needs to grow 330 MT per year. The small family farms are ecological and play a big role in promoting food security and nutritional support. In the state of Kerala, the average...