Skilling Women Farmers in India to Earn an Income

Over the past two months, we have set up the Agriculture and Soil Testing Lab. The lab will begin testing from mid-November onwards. There is no such facility within a 500 km radius and small-holder farmers travel long and far to be able to get access to a testing facility.
The lab has been equipt with machines and testing equipment where we can test Ph levels, 36 micronutrients such as Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium and diagnose crop diseases. After the farmer gets a test report, they get information on what nutrients their soil is lacking and what nutrients their water is lacking. If the soil lacks essential nutrients, farmers are unable to harvest a good quality and healthy crop.

Our solution includes not only testing the soil and irrigation water to inform farmers on what their soi land water is lacking, but also providing expert advice to farmers as to what dosage of nutrients, fertilizers and pesticides their crop will require at different intervals of their crop cycle. By providing farming consultancy to farmers we will work with them to transition to organic farming to improve their soil health and reduce their carbon footprint.

We have a long way to go in ensuring that the Agriculture and Soil Testing Lab can efficiently continue operations. We are raising funds to cover the cost of software to capture data from testing, consultancy provided to farmers and impact experienced on the ground in terms of increase in yields, incomes and conversion to organic farming.

Links:

• Supporting Women Farmers to become Climate Heroes