Produce

Focused on restoring agricultural lands across India, the ‘Produce’ team within WRI India’s Food, Land and Water program works towards enabling a transition to sustainable and resilient food production systems across India. This can improve farm productivity, meet the country’s increasing food demands and nutritional requirements as well as secure incomes and livelihoods for communities dependent on forests, farmlands and common lands across India.

Transitioning to sustainable food production systems considering the landscape and agroecology is critical to maintain healthier farmlands, improve land productivity and build resilient livelihoods for farmers in India, particularly for the small and marginalized constituting 85% of its total farmers. Adopting sustainable agricultural practices such as crop diversification, and soil and moisture conservation and natural farming, agroforestry can improve soil health, rejuvenate water, and also help secure people’s food and nutrition needs, improve farm incomes, protect biodiversity, and maintain flow of essential ecosystem services.

Unlocking this opportunity by building resilient farming systems, we focus on strengthening sustainable agriculture practices across rural and peri-urban regions for strengthening urban and rural food systems. With this focus, we work towards:

• Developing inclusive strategies and proofs of concept for restoring agricultural lands with a landscape approach,
• Fostering strategic partnerships with local governments, grassroots organizations and farming communities that support farmer-led initiatives,
• Facilitating adoption of sustainable agriculture practices by farmers through capacity building, and
• Building research-based evidence on sustainable agriculture practices that can be adopted by farmers at scale.

Featured Resources

• Repurposing agricultural subsidies to restore degraded farmland and grow rural prosperity
• The real agri reforms India needs
• We need a sustainable food and land use system for India 
• Farmers need resilient value chains to combat climate impact
• Multi-stakeholder consultations on sustainable urban and peri-urban agriculture in India