Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi and PRADAN jointly organised a two-day workshop on Climate Resilient Cropping Systems for East India Plateau at RAC Auditorium, BAU. The workshop was inaugurated by D Narendra Nath, Integrator, PRADAN and George John, Vice Chancellor, BAU, Ranchi here on Thursday.
During the inauguration session, D N Nath told that this workshop on “Climate resilient cropping systems in East India Plateau” supported and organised by ACIAR-PRADAN-BAU is aimed at sharing knowledge and tools and creating a platform for the practitioners and academicians to share the results, outcomes and their experiences of the participatory research.
George John said that this workshop focused on the work done in the area of Climate Resilient Agriculture as well as congruent traditional farming systems by experts, institutions and researchers and exploring scope of setting up collaboration and partnerships among multiple stakeholders, including policy makers.
This was followed by presentations by Bill Bellotti, Programme Director (Food Systems), University of Queensland, Murray Unkovich (Adjunct Professor), University of Adelaide, members from Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) including D K Singh ‘Dron, Director (Research), M S Yadava (Chief Scientist and Chairman, Department of Agronomy) and others.
Murray Unkovich (Adjunct Professor), University of Adelaide said that Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR) and Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) are jointly working towards improving the cropping systems of the East India Plateau since 2006 in supporting action research to deliver significant agricultural and livelihood benefits to the largely tribal communities.
Bill Bellotti, Programme Director (Food Systems), University of Queensland said, “PRADAN-ACIAR Action Research Phase 1 (2006—2010) ‘Water harvesting and better cropping systems for smallholders of the East India Plateau’, led by Western Sydney University, project demonstrated that the dominant traditional cropping system of monoculture paddy is poorly adapted to the terraced and bunded uplands, and this finding largely explained why regional paddy yields have remained stubbornly low. It showed that short duration varieties of paddy are not only less risky, but they also create an opportunity to plant crops on residual water left after paddy. The research focussed primarily on women farmers in the process to enhance their knowledge, skills and agency either directly from the project or indirectly from exposures and out-scaling strategy.”
He also added that in the the second phase of the ACIAR project (from 2013) - ‘Improving livelihoods with innovative cropping systems on the East India Plateau‘, was formulated on the learning and findings of Phase 1. This phase is concerned with developing improved cropping systems for the ‘medium uplands’ which will retain rice as the staple food crop, but it will be shorter-duration, direct seeded rice (DSR) thus creating an opportunity for growing a range of late kharif and early rabi crops, previously it was not considered, or grown rarely.
In order to replicate results from the learning and to overcome the limitations of Phase 1, the second phase has adopted a research for development approach. This approach involves hard core research with inclusive learning as well as development of villages and is being carried out in three core villages. The research findings as well as the farmer’s learning are being extended and out-scaled to more than 200 villages.
Other notable presenters were Ashok Kumar and Amulya Khandai from PRADAN, Siddharth Patil from ACWADAM, Pune, Ramakrishnan M. N. from AVRDC, C. Bakkareddy from WASSAN and Debashish Sen from SRI, India.
The workshop was attended by about 150 participants from academic institutions, Government of Jharkhand, civil society organisations and NGO networks, research scientists and other experts.