UP World Bank WRG 2030 Accelerator

Owned by Ashu Sikri (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Feb 14, 2023
3 min read

Update from Feb 14 2023 call with Ajit Radhakrishnan

  • Focus of UP accelerator is agri water use efficiency; UP is the largest largest groundwater consumer, largest sugarcane and rice producer and has the least area under micro-irrigation

  • UP government wants to scale up sustainable rice production from 25k hectares today to 250k hectares (with a focus in Purvanchal)

  • Had a stakeholder workshop in early Feb and followup from that is for WRG to develop a “DSR (Direct Seeded Rice) Roadmap;” WB open to hearing from DG on how this can be done

  • Want to combine a basket of services to drive adoption which includes:

    • Advisory: WB wants to know what drives behavior change

    • Insurance: could be policies linked to germination or adverse weather (eg, parametric weather based product)

    • Access to quality inputs and services incl drip irrigation, improved seeds, nano fertilizers, seed drills, etc

  • WB sees a potential role for PACS and FPOs to provide a bundle of services to member farmers; I mentioned our FPO capacity building and comms + coordination work could be a fit here

  • IRRI and IARI will support MRV for the UP Accelerator; seems like carbon finance is not an immediate priority, will get layered in over time

Sharing slides for a project being developed by World Bank WRG in UP.

 

 

I spoke with Kavita Sachwani from WB and auctusESG who is supporting the project in September.

I shared the points below with them on our Bihar work and they will bring us in to the discussions as things move ahead.

  • Digital Green is anchoring a consortium of partners that brings together government extension (JEEViKA), agronomic expertise (Cereal Systems Initiative of South Asia, CSISA), carbon markets policy + standards (Environmental Defense Fund, EDF) and emission modeling (Cornell University). 

  • Our goals are to drive adoption of climate smart agricultural practices which reduce yield scale emissions and develop region specific, scalable GHG accounting methodologies and standards relevant for policymakers and farmer participation in ecosystem services / carbon offset markets. 

  • On the advisory front, we are focusing on optimizing application of nitrogen based fertilizers and early sowing. Nitrogen is 300x more potent than CO2 in heating the atmosphere and India’s fertilizer subsidy bill for FY23 will be +2 lakh crore rupees. Advisories are being delivered across various channels - community videos, Whatsapp and IVR - across 11 districts in Bihar representing 3 different agro-climatic zones. Given farmer engagement is critical to drive practice adoption, we are piloting farmer-facing tools like benchmarking scorecards which compare a farmer's yield and other key indicators with nearby peers to drive interest in advisory content. 

  • On the emission modeling front, we have trained JEEViKA VRPs on how to capture critical information like agronomic practices and field hydrology via an open source data collection app. This data is audited by DG and JEEViKA staff and then used to generate estimates of emissions per unit of yield and changes relative to that baseline through adoption of CSA practices. We are aiming to reduce the complexity of using a Tier 3 model to generate emission estimates by calibrating the model for local conditions in Bihar. 

  • We are also training JEEViKA staff and VRPs on the "what" and "why" of Climate Smart Agriculture. We are developing a curriculum that builds on existing resources from BISA, EDF and NIRD.