MoM – FRAME Partners Meeting – 16 & 17 Feb, 2023

Date: 16 & 17 February, 2023

Place: Hotel Lemon Tree, Patna

Participants:

Deligates - Dr. Shish Pal Pooniya, CSISA/CIMMYT; Dr. Sonam Sherpa, CIMMYT; Dr. Laura Arenas Calle, TCI; Prof. J.K.Laddha, UC Davis; Seema Paul, Sequoia Climate Fund; Lalli Venkat Krishnan, Sequoia Climate Fund; Nikhil Goveas, EDF; Amresh Choudhary, EDF; Ajit Singh, EDF; 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; Ankita, COO & Co-founder, Varaha Ag (Virtually); Anjali, World Bank group, Subhendra Sanyal, UNDP

Digital Green – Krishnan Pallasana, Ravi Shankar Sharma, Akash Asthana, Shams Tarique, Falguni Ganguli, Yogesh Sahu, Ashu Sikri (Virtually)

Proposed Agenda:

Day 1:

• 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)

Discussion post presentation:

Sequoia (Seema) - Sequoia is a pro-mitigation organization. 15% of emission in India is from land and food sector, and adding the energy applied in this sector, it became 23-24%. Focus areas for Sequoia while developing India strategy are 1: Energy use - focus on solar energy 2: CH4 emission check from rice and livestock 3: Creating bigger food and land system transition use cases (regenerative agriculture/natural farming/CRA/CSA/organic farming etc). Bihar and MP are focus states for Sequoia.

Manoj (JEEViKA) was asked to share his experience with the project and JEEViKA’s priorities going forward in the climate change sector

1. FRAME project’s focus is to device a tool that will count the GHG emission from farmers field through quantifying and qualifying the data with international standard and monetize the farmers by linking them to carbon markets.

2. In FRAME project team is collecting multi-season/multi-year/multi-crop data that will be further utilize to get GHG emission data and to give farmer’s carbon credit.

3. CSOs and research institute should work hand in hand and support government in this domain.

4. Manoj shared his experience of SLACC (Sustainable Livelihood and Adoption to Climate Change) project where JEEViKA was providing farmers with climate forecast that helped the farmers to mitigate the climate risk to a large extent. Manoj also shared that the “Climate adoption tool” that was developed on the basis of the experience of the can be a helpful tool for farmers that talks about different risk mitigation strategies for farmers at different climatic condition. This tool can be scaled up in the FRAME project.

• 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

Day 2:

Discussion points:

1. Next 6 months

   1. Advisories/contents

   2. Modelling/estimations

   3. Working together

   4. Sharing of lessons

2. Beyond 6 months

   1. Ideas - scale up/Impact

   2. Partnerships

Next 6 months - priorities:

• On the basis of the data that we are capturing during the lifecycle of the project, how the data can be used to make advisories more specific and tailormade?

• What are the tweaks that have to be made in data collection to make the modelling more accurate and acceptable?

• How to improve coordination among partners?

• Sharing the lessons learned from the project by different stakeholders within the group as well as with larger fraternity

• What are we going to do beyond 6 month, not conceptual things but broad ideas from different partners and stakeholders that can be scaled up and have real impact on ground and how present partnership and new partnerships can work together to achieve that.

Advisory/Content:

Current advisories:

• Timely transplantation of rice and timely sowing of wheat

• Rice nitrogen application advisory (informed by last 3 years yield data) and Wheat nitrogen application advisory (informed by the day of sowing and number of irrigation to be provided)

• Irrigation management for wheat

Two challenges regarding advisories

1. Converting the tabular advisories into video format

2. Is there anything beyond the above mentioned advisories

Discussion:

Manoj - Sowing/planting date and critical stages for irrigation are two important advisories for farmer.

Andrew

1. Timely planting of rice is important because delay in rice transplantation will delay wheat also

2. Feedback of farmers on the advisories are important, it is critical to understand why or why not farmers are adopting certain practices, is it the advisory only or there are other factors also.

3. Collaboration of JEEViKA and Digital Green can widespread these advisories

Dr. J.K.Laddha

1. Practices are very much site specific and incorporating such site specific advisories into one video will be difficult. Video advisories will be generic.

2. Right time for planting, right time for fertilizer application principles, yield target based on sowing date of wheat etc. that much amount of science can get into video advisories.

Akash

FRAME team tried to address these critical things in a couple of ways.

1. IEC materials like a leaflet contain the nitrogen table for wheat and rice will be distributed among the farmers as a ready reference

2. Farmer scorecard that provide very much plot specific advisory for planting/sowing date and nitrogen fertilizer dosage

Dr. J.K.Laddha - Focus on the practices that increases crop production e.g. age of seedling

Falguni -Are there any other intervention point that is critical, other than nitrogen optimization, water management and planting/sowing time that can reduce GHG along with increase in production?

Andrew - Irrigation is very critical in GHG emission. There is a need to collect intelligence on the irrigation practices farmers are following in the field. FRAME team has already incorporated some of those points related to irrigation in the rice survey form - whether the farmer has irrigated the field in last three week, capacity of the pump, diameter of the pipe used for irrigation and for how many hours irrigation is done.

Subhendra Sanyal - How to make farmers more resilient in this changing climatic conditions like erratic and delayed rainfall, increasing temperature, shifting of monsoon period. Incorporate all these factors into the strategy to strengthen efforts to reduce the vulnerability of farmer.

Modelling/Estimations:

• TCI is been requested to share if any additional data point is required or not apart from the existing data list

• Soil hydrology data is not a one time data, it is periodic data and needs to be collected over a period of time (possibly every three weeks). This raise question of capacity of the cadres, bandwidth with JEEViKA for collection of data and to incentivize the cadre if needed.

• Can this data be collected through remote sensing or satellite imaging. Which one is scalable and cost effective Cadre collecting data vs Remote sensing/satellite imaging

• Anil (JEEViKA) said that if the number of data to be collected is lesser in number then that is fine, if the number is more then a specialized cadre e.g. MRP who are duly trained in such type of data collection, can be created for collection of such exclusive data.

• Manoj (JEEViKA) said the master resource person can train the VRPs also.

• CIMMYT is working on using remote sensing for estimation of irrigation timing

• IVR can be a tool to get irrigation data at a regular interval

Sharing of lesson: EDF

• 5 Days course to train master FLW on climate smart practices for JEEViKA cadres -> Master Resource person (250)

• Trying to incorporate learning at government system with ATMA, EDF is training ATMA staffs and cadres on CSA (Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, East Champaran and West Champaran. Learning from all projects including FRAME will be incorporated in this training modules.

• The 5 day training content to be shared with Dr. J.K.Laddha, TCI, CIMMYT and JEEViKA for their feedback.

• Training materials are in pipeline

• DG is planning an event in Jun-Jul sometime keeping every stakeholder/partner as well as Ag. Department and others govt. agency to publish everything to everyone.

Coordination:

• Coordination Call every month with every partner part of it. This call will be scheduled on the first Tuesday of every month

• The agenda for the call will be shared in advance by DG and those who are directly concerned with the agenda will join the call. No need for everyone to join the call.

Beyond 6 month - Ideas:

Filip - VNV advisories:

• Crop burning

  • Use of harvest waste for mulching

• Focus on agro-forestry

Subhendra - UNDP:

• How to transfer the carbon credit money to farmers

• Align strategy with net zero pathway

• Align intervention with the organic corridor of Do-Ag (digital applications??)

EDF:

• Focus on dairy and livestock sector

• Marketing of premium product

• Promotion of use of nano-urea may be another way to optimize fertilizer application and reduce emission

CEEW:

• Land use pattern change

• Paddy cum fish culture

JEEViKA:

• Increase income, reduced cost of cultivation

• Digital technology for real time data sharing

• Scaling up/extension

• Addressing challenges related to proper data collection

• Capacity building of farmers and FLWs.

Dr. JK Laddha:

• Sustainable agro system

• Innovations

Prof. Andrew:

• Climate condition specific advisories

• Diligent digital solutions

• Use of climate finance

Lalli - Sequoia

• Monthly catch up calls is a good idea for better coordination

• Socio-economic system specific approach

Digital Green:

• Incorporating gender approach in each and every intervention.

Action Points came up in the meeting:

1. 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).

2. Digital Green (Akash/Falguni) to separately set up calls with CSISA and EDF on implementation level follow up (advisories, training, white paper etc).

3. CSISA to expedite recommendations that will inform advisories to farmers.

4. 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

5. CSISA will reach out to Digital Green (Akash) on piloting soil hydrology data collection with limited number of farmers

6. Digital Green (Yogesh) will start working on analyzing already available data (Paddy 250:6900, Wheat 1300:15000) to understand input usage trends

7. EDF will share training curricula with partners+JK, share training calendar asap (Akash to follow up, ask for these)

8. EDF to start putting together knowledge piece/white paper based on lessons learned so far (Akash to ask for timeline, follow up)

9. 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.

@ Recording of the meeting