Two day workshop on ‘Scaling up climate smart agriculture in Telangana state’

Hyderabad, Dec 9 (Maxim News): The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Environment Protection Training and Research Institute (EPTRI) and CGIAR jointly organized a two day workshop on ‘Scaling up climate smart agriculture in Telangana state’ at ICRISAT during the period 6-7 December 2016.

The workshop was attended by Mr.Peter Carberry, Deputy Director General, ICRISAT. , Mr.B. Kalyan Chakravarthy,IAS, Director General, Environment Protection Training and Research Institute, Dr. V. Praveen Rao, Vice Chancellor, Professor Jayasankar Telangana State Agriculture University PJTSAU, Anthony Whitebread, Program Director, ISD, ICRISAT, Dr. Shalander Kumar , other scientists from ICRISAT, EPTRI ,CRIDA and officials from many departments of the state of Telangana viz.

Department of Agriculture, Department of Horticulture, Department of Animal Husbandry, Telangana State Seed Corporation, National Seed Corporation, State Ground Water Department, Telangana MARKFED, Telangana State Warehousing Corporation, and Rural Development Department and DWMA and NGOs etc participated in the event

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is attracting increasing interest and attention in various parts of the world including in India. Multiple institutions have demonstrated evidences for developing climate-smart villages (CSVs) in India which can act as a sustainable model for farmers’ welfare.

The state of Maharashtra and Bihar has taken up CSVs as mission mode programmes. However, the challenges still remain to upscale CSV approach to the mandals/districts and the whole state.

There is a pressing need for the state of Telangana to recognize the need of more an CSVs in the state as it contributes to climate change mitigation, adaptation and enhancing g productivity.

Given the importance of conceiving and planning well integrated interventions the workshop was successful in bringing together different stakeholders. It also dealt with sessions on approaches and methods for building climate smart agriculture in the state.

This workshop also facilitated in raising the understanding and capacity to design context specific prioritized strategies to upscale CSA approaches as well as to determine priority interventions at mandal level for different agro climatic zones of Telangana and how these will relate to ongoing and new project initiatives.

About sixty experts, practitioners and policy makers participated in the workshop. The workshop will provide a unique opportunity to learn and contribute on context specific climate smart practices (CSAPs), methodologies for risk mapping and prioritization of CSAPs, identifying synergies and design district level implementation plans for promoting climate smart agriculture.