On 3rd, 4th and 5th October 2023, WIN Foundation organised a field workshop on ‘Farmer centric protocols in agriculture practices and role of innovation and technology’ in partnership with ACT (Arid Communities and Technologies)  Bhuj. We invited technology startups such as Rajul Patkar from Proximal SoilSens, Tarang Patel from Intach Harness, Chandraj Shah from Raj instruments, and visited different project villages to understand farmers’ practices and issues faced in agriculture.

 

We had active participation and constructive discussions with the technology startups, agriculture experts, KVK Mundra and project team. This included insightful discussions with different farmer and women groups from Abdasa and Mandvi project locations, who practised rainfed farming, irrigated farming, horticulture, summer crops and also nutri-garden. The issues and concerns raised by the groups were of different nature, ranging from seed quality and storage, to water availability and salinity in water, organic inputs, need of soil and water quality testing, pest infestation, uncertain and unpredictable rainfall.

 

A reflection and planning session was done post the 2 days of visiting farms and meeting farmers with the start-ups, ACT team, Bhujal Jankars, and WIN team, to plan for the Winter cropping season. For more details, the workshop report can be read here