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Date: 16 & 17 February, 2023
Place: Hotel Lemon Tree, Patna
Participants:
Deligates Delegates -
CSISA/CIMMYT: Dr. Shish Pal S.P. Pooniya, CSISA/CIMMYT; Dr. Sonam Sherpa, CIMMYT;
TCI: Prof. Andrew James McDonalds, Dr. Laura Arenas Calle, TCI;
UC Davis: Prof. J.K.Laddha, UC Davis; JK Laddha
CIP: Dr. Suresh Kumar Kakraliya
Sequoia Climate Fund: Seema Paul, Sequoia Climate Fund; Lalli Venkat Krishnan, Sequoia Climate Fund;
EDF: Nikhil Goveas, EDF; Amresh Choudhary, EDF; Ajit Singh , EDF;
CEEW: Sahil, CEEW; K. Satish Kumar, CEEW; Swati Sharma, CEEW; Filip, VNV Advisory; Dr. Suresh Kumar Kakraliya, CIP; Kaushal Bisth, Varaha Ag; Manoj Kumar, SPM, JEEViKA; Anil Kumar, PM – LH, JEEViKA;
VNV Advisory: Filip
Varaha Ag: Kaushal Bisth, Ankita, COO & Co-founder, Varaha Ag (Virtually); Anjali,
JEEViKA: Dr. Manoj Kumar, SPM; Anil Kumar, PM – LH
World Bank group, : Anjali (Virtually)
UNDP: Subhendra Sanyal, UNDP
Digital Green – Krishnan Pallasana, Ravi Shankar Sharma, Akash Asthana, Shams Tarique, Falguni Ganguli, Yogesh Sahu, Ashu Sikri (Virtually)
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Meeting started with welcome and introduction of the participants, followed by context setting by Krishnan
Purpose of this meeting
Take Stock of FRAME Project implementation How MRV system can benefit farmers
Finalising the MRV system and emission modeling
Understanding the landscape and ecosystem for forward action
Presentation (Krishnan) on the progress of FRAME project
Climate & Agriculture is a challenge as well as opportunity
Collection of credible data is a prominent challenge that DG is trying to address
How DG is trying to come up with a robust but scalable solution (current data collection process and interpretation of data )
DG is using KoboTool box application for data collection of the farmers
250 farmers data collected during monsoon 2021 to test the data collection tool
1100 farmers data collected during rabi 2021-2022 for wheat crop
6900 farmers data collected during monsoon 2022 as a baseline for rice, advisories introduced
Plan is to collect 15000 farmers data for wheat during rabi 2022-23 and 25000 farmers data during, validation of data with CSA advisories to farmers
These data set will be used for generation of GHG emission from farmers field and provide farmers with targeted and tailormade advisories (farmer scorecard)
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Filip from VNV advisory and Kaushal Bisth from Varaha Ag introduced his organization and their work and put light on their experience of how the farmers can be benefitted more with the MRV work Digital Green is doing on ground.
Varaha Ag shared their experience (presentation)
Varaha Ag also works in the similar lines of collecting field data and generating emission through DNDC model.
Varaha Ag has a 200,000 acres in Punjab & Haryana that will go under the DNDC modelling and first set of farmers are expected to receive money for their carbon credit soon which will act as incentive for the farmers and help in farmers behavioral change towards adoption of practices like DSR/In-situ soil and pest management etc.
There is interest from big companies in carbon credits.
A farmer will get paid for 3-4 credits per year (1000 tons of CO2e = 1 credit), $40 per credit
No product certification for premium product
Collaboration with VERRA for data validity, audit and carbon credit certification.
Collaboration with CSOs for farmer onboarding.
Varaha is expected paying to farmers for 20 years
Ankita from Varaha joined virtually and she answered few questions came up during Varaha’s presentation
If the farmer is farming on a leased land and not a owner, who will get the credits? - The owner of the land signs an agreement and the credit money goes to the farmer who is cultivating in that particular piece of land
Data collection and calibration for modelling (DNDC) - DNDC essentially requires soil profile and weather data for estimation. Soil data collected through soil sampling and weather data collected from weather station. For calibration, experiments are done on field and also calibrated with the help of different literature available.
Dr. J.K.Laddha - Farmers can be incentivized on the basis of adoption of CSA practices. That can be an approach, rather than payment based on GHG emission and carbon credit.
Manoj - Maintaining C-N ration is important for reduction of GHG emission. There are different initiative to maintain the C-N ratio by various government and non government agencies. FRAME project is aiming to capture the data of fertilizer application that will validate the practice.
VNV Advisory shared their experience (presentation)
The data collected need to be as much accurate as possible
Training on data collection and then scrutinizing the data based on the local trends of different agronomic practices of a particular geography (exactly what is been done in FRAME project for data quality assurance)
Data validation by third party to audit the advised practices, payment to be made on the basis of the third party report, payment can be full or partial based on the report.
The economics of data collection and validation - is the process low cost and scalable ????
Long association with farmers is needed to convince them to adopt certain practices
Is there any credible certification system in India - no
Compensating individual farmers will be hard compared to farmers group or farmers institutions
Learning from the session
Data needs to be credible and validated against leading market systems like UNFCCC, VERRA, Gold Standards
Payment for carbon credit vs incentivizing practices - what is more practical ?????
Presentation by Prof. Andrew McDonalds and Dr. Laura Arenas Calle on the emission modelling:
1: Hydrologic environment in Bihar is complicated – image in the ppt slide 13 shows large variation in the hydrology condition in one single district, single year, West Champaran, blue Indicates presence of ponded water with red indicating fully drained soil conditions.
2: GHG emission can’t be attributed to one single factor but an aggregation of number of factors, and soil hydrology situation is one crucial for GHG emission in rice. Situation of each field should be taken into account.
3: Tier 1 tools like CFT doesn’t account the joint distribution of factors like soil information, weather conditions, yield economics, hydrological conditions etc, whereas DNDC is one dimensional water model, either water come in and out or water remains in the field.
Dr. Laura Arenas Calle is working on the model and by June 2023, a working model will be ready to test out with the data collected in the project.
Sequoia is also ok with the first version coming out in June 2023 considering things are on the right direction
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Incorporating gender approach in each and every intervention.
Action Points came up in the meeting:
Partner Coordination meeting, every second Tuesday of the month till September (Akash to send out calendar invites with zoom link to TCI, SCISA, EDF and JEEViKA (Anil) with clear purpose and agenda before every meeting. Progress of the project, delays, reasons and plans for next month to be prepared (including partners’) prior to the meeting (as specific as possible).
Digital Green (Akash/Falguni) to separately set up calls with CSISA and EDF on implementation level follow up (advisories, training, white paper etc).
CSISA to expedite recommendations that will inform advisories to farmers.
Dr. JK Ladha will support content finalization/script/converting technical recommendations into easy to understand language as well as engage with TCI on the Tier 2 model they are developing. Any studies, reports and documents to be shared by Akash with Dr. JK
CSISA will reach out to Digital Green (Akash) on piloting soil hydrology data collection with limited number of farmers
Digital Green (Yogesh) will start working on analyzing already available data (Paddy 250:6900, Wheat 1300:15000) to understand input usage trends
EDF will share training curricula with partners+JK, share training calendar asap (Akash to follow up, ask for these)
EDF to start putting together knowledge piece/white paper based on lessons learned so far (Akash to ask for timeline, follow up)
EDF to plan and put together a state level meeting to share key learning (event in August)
Meeting ended with thanks giving by Krish & Akash from DG and , Manoj and Anil from JEEViKA.
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