What is LCF?
The Surveysights Research and Development is a pioneer in Low Carbon Farming. Simply put, this is the incentivising or rewarding of Sustainable Agriculture practices taken up by small, marginal and drought affected farmers with Carbon Revenues.
Initially saw LCF merely as a strategy to incentivise small and marginal farmers with Carbon Revenues, to abandon High External Input Destructive Agriculture (HEIDA) and adopt Sustainable Agriculture with Carbon Revenues. Later we recognised 3 other Economic Drivers that root for SA as Increased Yield, Decreased Input Costs and Improved Price for SA Produce.
On further reflection, we now understand Low Carbon Farming as synonymous to a low carbon growth trajectory in all fields of farm economics, fulfilling farm and family energy needs. In this manner, LCF contributes to the traditional understanding of Sustainable Agriculture as a healthy balance between crops, trees, animals and people.
Background
The farm sector offers significant opportunities for carbon sequestration and emission reductions. Emissions from farming contribute 14% of global Greenhouse Gases. In India, farming contributes to 28% of the national GHG emissions. Low Carbon Farming practices offer farmers the opportunity to capitalize on the carbon market, as they shift to agricultural methods that are more sustainable, involve lower input costs and result in emission reduction and sequestration by sinks.
Several Surveysights Research and Development Members are grassroots NGOs involved in Sustainable Agriculture (SA). They have developed technologies that go by various terms which resulted in shifts in cultivation practices. They showed these techniques as workable on demonstrations that range from small pockets in scattered villages to hundreds of hectares in contiguous tracts. Scaling up these SA practices was the challenge.
Quantifying N2O, CH4 and CO2 avoidance in practices currently being propagated under SA, introducing new practices to further bring down the carbon footprint, and claiming Emission Reductions to earn Carbon Revenue was the solution.
Subsistence Cultivation to Sustainable Agriculture
An issue with subsistence cultivation carried out more as a custom or tradition, is that it offers very little excitement to the participants. When small, marginal and drought affected farmers attempt to imitate mainstream capital intensive practices, they land themselves in a soup due to insufficient knowledge, capital, and low risk taking capacity. The younger generation of farmers' sons and daughters get increasingly alienated and look to other, often non-existent, economic opportunities which are way beyond their reach.
Through Low Carbon Farming, we could bring back an excitement in agriculture, using environmentally sound, state of the art technology that are not mainstream. This would absorb schooled and educated peasant youth in productive activities in an expanded rural economy. Skilled and motivated labour force will be engaged in profitable cultivation, with regular and reliable income. Field crops would be grown mainly for food security. Non-farm jobs and economic activities would be created through increased biomass.
Low Carbon Farming (LCF) Strategy
LCF supports sustainable farming by encouraging farmers to adopt practices that reduce/minimize/remove the use of synthetic fertilizers while, at the same time, improving soil carbon content. This is done through reduced tillage, anaerobic composting, using organic fertilizers, mulching, intercropping, multi-cropping, and a horde of techniques specially designed for particular regions, populations and climatic zones.
Planting fuel, fodder and fruit trees, and protecting those that are already there on the farms.
Planting multiple crops on the same field support biodiversity. Proper crop mixes, based on science and demonstrated results, promotes resilience by bringing about a balance in the farm ecology and reducing the risk of crop failures due to pest attack. Multiple cropping also reduces the risk exposure for farmers against erratic and spatial rainfall.