Caring for those who feed the nation

Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) is a professional resource organization engaged in establishing models of sustainable agriculture working in partnership with Farmers, Farmer Producer Organisations, Governments, NGOs, and Markets. The primary work of CSA is spread across villages in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, and Punjab working with over 50,000 farmers directly and more than 200,000 farmers through our services. We plan to reach 100,000 farmers directly and 500,000 farmers through our services by 2025.

Towards this mission CSA organises implements the following programs. Each of the program will have multiple projects which are time bound with specific outcomes. In addition to the program implementation, CSA also provides various services to other organisations, government programs etc to support strengthen their implementation.

Agroecology and innovations in farming

  • Climate Change: Impacts, mitigation, adaptation and resilience
  • Organic/natural farming: cropping systems, integrated systems, production practices
  • Biosafety: GM crops, Pesticides
  • Sustainable Seed Systems: Reviving diversity, conservation, organic breeding and participatory varietal selection, seed library, seed banks and enterprises, Open Source (open access and benefit sharing) systems
  • Extension and Advisory services: Diagnositics, Survilience and Advisory Services

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Resilient Livelihoods

  • Nutritional security: Household, institutional models
  • Sustainable Livelihoods Framework: resource based planning, capacity building, forward and backward linkages
  • Diversifying income baskets: On farm, Off farm and non farm livelihoods
  • Individual and community based rural enterprises: Bioenterprises, Food processing,  retail stores

Farmer Producer Organisations

  • Farmer Producer Organizations: Incubation, business development, Federations
  • Farmer Service Centres: agri entrepreneurs providing wide range of services to farmers
  • FPOhub: is an initiative to build an enabling ecosystem to facilitate emergence of robust FPOs which in turn build livelihood and entrepreneurial opportunities for rural communities and help in transition to economically viable and ecologically sustainable agriculture.

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Innovating markets for farmers

  • Direct Marketing: gives retter price realisation for Farmers and CSA has been experimenting with various models.  Sahaja Aharam Organic Retail is an initiative to link urban consumers directly to rural organic producers.
  • Farmers market platform: FPOhub Farmers’ Market Place connects farmers to retail and bulk buyers.
  • Traceability: Building traceability system to know where, how and who grow the food.
  • Consumer engagement: to create conscious and responsible consumption
  • Value Addition: local value addition, ethnic foods, minimal processed

Public policy research

  • Building evidences for agroecological approaches
  • Income security for Farmers: policy frameworks, financial instruments
  • Improving support systems for farmers: Delivery, Governance systems, Ecosystem Services,
  • Regulatory Frameworks
  • Agriwatch: Impact assessments

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Support Services for Agroecological Transitions

  • Participatory Guarantee System for ensuring organic integrity: Small group certification, Large Area Certification
  • Training and Capacity Building: Courses on Organic/Natural Farming Transitions, Building Farmer Producer Organisations, Public policy in agriculture for Trainers and Community Resource Persons
  • Extension and Advisory Services: Annual support to organisations, programs for transitioning towards organic/natural farming, Diagnositics, Survilience and Advisory Services
  • Incubating FPOs: Business Development
  • Digital Tools: eKrishi Pestoscope (Diagnostics), FPOhub (ERP for FPOs)