Every year, about 5.7 million acres of rice paddy stubble are burned on the farms of North India. This burning results in the formation of a blanket of smog that chokes the entire Delhi-NCR during winter, making it one of the most polluted cities in the world.
Farmers in Punjab and Haryana are compelled to carry stubble burning due to lack of cost-effective and environment-friendly crop decomposition options.
In an attempt to systematically deal with this issue from the grassroots, NABARD, NABFOUNDATION, and nurture.farm are entering into a Memorandum of Understanding to #EndTheBurn. The joint venture will see these three entities collaborating to push the revolutionary PUSA Decomposer enzyme developed by the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi. The simple nurture.farm phone application will allow farmers across Haryana and Punjab to avail the facility of having an SHG member come over to the farm with all required infrastructure. Spraying the PUSA decomposer will allow the farmers to sow the next set of crops in as less as 8 days. This is a remarkable breakthrough since the farmers will no longer have to use hazardous methods to decompose their stubble.
Moreover, the #EndTheBurn campaign will also provide direct livelihood opportunities to 4000 SHG members by training them as Krishi Mitras (field partners). The partnership aims to handhold the farmers in a very organic manner throughout the process and provides capacity building support to them through an uberization model involving boom-sprayers and other farm mechanization opportunities. Also the three agencies will be focusing upon empowering women in these states to emerge as #EndTheBurn champions.
Dhruv Sawhney, Business Head and COO, nurture.farm said, "We are excited about this partnership with NABFOUNDATION as it would facilitate us to create thousands of new jobs in innovative Agri technologies focussed on driving sustainable agricultural practices. In phase 1, nurture.farm served more than 25,000 farmers, and this partnership will help us take the initiative in the upcoming years to a more extensive level. Our association with NABFOUNDATION will add impetus to creating rural livelihood and empowering women with the latest Agri technologies to help transform their lives and of the farmers whom they will be associated with."
Dr. G R Chintala, Chairman, NABARD said, “Climate proofing of Indian agriculture is central to NABARD’s policy framework. NABARD has been accredited as National Implementing Entity (NIE) for Adaptation Fund in July 2012 and is the only NIE for India. Through NABFOUNDATION, our convergence with nurture.farm will allow us to leverage our strengths and bring about colossal change in the Indian agriculture ecosystem. The magnitude of this change can be quantified through the direct impact on the lives of the farmers and SHGs, and the indirect impact on the residents of North-India who would now be able to breathe better for several winters to come. At a time when environmental crisis has occupied the centre stage of debates across the world, this project can be understood as a major step in the direction of more sustainable living; a dire need for both man and environment.”
