Launch of RESILIENCE project at Assam Agriculture University, Jorhat, Assam

Chennai, October 10, 2018: The Climate Resilience project was launched by the Minister of Agriculture, Assam, today, with plans to work in two states i.e. Odisha and Assam, located in the east and north-east parts of India. The overall goal of the project is to improve the agricultural productivity, adaptive capacity and livelihoods of small holders to climate, economic and social changes by building resilience and strengthening the agri-product market value chains. The project is planning to work directly with 2000 farmers, and to reach 20,000 farmers by adopting modern ICT tools in partnership with Krishi Vigyan Kendra’s (KVK). The key expected outcomes are improvements in agricultural productivity of small holders, promoting adoption of climate-smart agricultural technologies by strengthening agro-ecologies,intensification of the production systems, enhancing women’s participation in farm-level decision making, strengthening appropriate institutional measures and providing policy inputs to State-level climate-action plans.

MSSRF’s role is to work on the two cross cutting themes; ICT and gender, adopting an interdisciplinary approach with other partners i.e. Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat in Assam and National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack and Odisha University for Agriculture and Technology in Odisha. MSSRF will be establishing a Village Knowledge Centres (VKCs) in four project sites in these two states with the collaboration of KVKs in the respected sites. MSSRF will work on mainstreaming gender in different phases of the project by adopting the project-cycle approach to improve the gender relations at the farm level.