MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PARTNERSHIP WITH DAIRY FARMERS AT THE CENTER

• Multi-stakeholder partnership
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About 22% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are linked to agriculture. To curb global climate change, agriculture worldwide requires a significant reduction in energy consumption, chemical fertilizer use and inefficient waste management practices. Further, inefficient agricultural practices drive land use changes that are a major cause of GHG emissions and deforestation. Smallholder farmers grow approximately 80% of the food consumed in developing economies yet have an acute lack of climate-smart agricultural technologies and training. The majority of rural households still use wood fuel to meet their energy needs, which produces net GHG emissions. Their alternative is to meet their household and farm energy needs with fossil fuels, creating a development pathway for further GHG emissions. Chemical fertilizers and other agricultural inputs emit GHGs through their production, transport and application, locking farmers into a costly and emissions-intensive production cycle. Finally, agricultural wastes and animal manure, managed inefficiently, create significant GHG emissions, while also contaminating local watersheds. Taken together, climate change, food security and poverty will be the drivers of many other global problems: displacement, conflict, ecosystem loss and many others. Humanity’s ability to address these issues with smallholder farmers go a long way to determine if we are able to address them at all.
As per our internal estimates, about 50% of the dairy farmers have 3-5 cows in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Improving the productivity of farm animals is one of the major challenges. Efforts with TATA CINI Group have demonstrated great success stories in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The objective of our partnership with TATA CINI Group is to reduce the barriers of customer adoption and to increase access to biogas technology to the small & marginal farmers.
We introduced our proven Sistema.bio biodigester program with support from Tata Trust and local Gujarat partner CINI. After a successful pilot and scale-up, we ventured into more programs supported by CINI such as CSPC Gujarat, SIED Maharashtra, CMF Rajasthan and Sustain Plus Assam. In collaboration with CINI, we have introduced 250+ families to our biogas product, training and service, and now dozens of biodigesters have been installed with other programs and are running successfully. Till date, these units are providing clean energy services and improving the agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers in Gujarat. This experience has allowed us to also support other projects in Gujarat, and demonstrated the potential to scale the impact of the social enterprise in this region.