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VNV is a developer of carbon offset projects
Launching a program in Bihar w TERI in Araria and Purnia; Open to utilizing our MRV platform and leveraging video based extension in their project
Intro Presentation
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Notes from July 21 call and Aug 30 checkin
Upcoming project in North Bihar (Araria district) with JEEViKA and TERIVNV is providing solar pumps and promoting certain climate smart practices (eg, avoiding crop burning) and aims to generate carbon offset credits
“As a part of the sustainable and regenerative agriculture program, 200 solar units will be introduced to the field to generate solar energy that will be distributed to farmers across the region for the purpose of energy-efficient irrigation. VNV anticipates an approximate generation of 50,000 carbon credits per annum, which will lead to the provision of innovative solar-driven facilities, and thereby enable the farmers to transition to improved agricultural practices, conscious of energy usage and the impact on climate change.”
JEEViKA has provided a list of ~100k farmers and there is an in-person planning meeting scheduled for mid-September. JEEViKA VRPs will support farmer mobilization and data collection
Goal is for Kharif 2022 or Rabi 2022/2023 to the first season during which farmers earn offset revenue; working on mobilization and piloting various aspects of the program between now and then
The practices that VNV is promoting as part of their climate smart ag work include organic amendments (avoiding crop residue burning fits here as well), agroforestry/tree planting and water efficiency. They are not doing much with no tillage at the moment. are:
Decrease use of nitrogen fertilizers
Agroforestry
Cover crops / nitrogen fixes trees / plants
Switch from conventional to reduced or conservation tillage
Avoid burning crop residue and switch to incorporating residue
Solar water pumps to decrease use of fossil fuels for farming activities
Organic amendments: manure application, composting, mulching
Kitchen gardens to improve access to nutrition
Switch from continuous flooding to AWD
On water measurements, installing flow meters and IoT chips on about 3% of all plots covered in a project (sounds like this is in line with approved project methodologies) and taking farmer logbook data on # of hours of pumping
VNV has a number of offset projects and is working with GoldStandard to get the credits certified
Key Pain points:
Land records: the VNV field team is manually mapping plots but they polygons / land demarcation they are creating based on farmer input don't match district records. There is only a 25% match at the moment and VNV hasn't yet figured out how to resolve cases where there this disconnect btwn govt and farmer reported records exists. This is cropping up all the states where they have programs; MH, MP, Jharkhand and its a big deal given recipient of the credit needs to hold the land title and proceeds are based on land size
Reliability of data: Local Ag research institute has a regional average on say, tons of phosphorus applied, but the farmer survey data is all over the place; from 3 to 7 tons. Auditors want receipts but most farmers don’t have them. This leaves the VNV field team in a position where are circling back with farmers to validate and correct data entries. In their maize program, VNV is working through FPOs who supply inputs and they actually control what the farmers apply which helps but this not scalable.
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