Climate Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

ISRNs “Climate Smart FPOs” initiative operates across four regions- Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh mobilising nearly 25,000 smallholder farmers through 46 active FPOs. The programme was launched to address climate vulnerability, soil degradation, rising input costs, and limited market access faced by farmers in hill, rainfed, and climate-sensitive landscapes.
Guided by agriculture experts, local innovations, and farmer knowledge, the initiative promotes organic and regenerative farming practices that replace chemical fertilisers and pesticides with bio-fertilisers, compost, green manures, botanical pest control, and residue recycling. These practices reduce CO₂ and nitrous oxide emissions linked to synthetic inputs, improve soil organic carbon, enhance moisture retention, and strengthen resilience to erratic weather.
The project emphasises crop diversification, encouraging mixed cropping, horticulture, pulses, millets, vegetables, fodder crops, and agroforestry systems adapted to local conditions. Diversification reduces methane-intensive mono-cropping, improves soil health and biodiversity, spreads climate risk, and provides year-round income.
Through FPOs, farmers receive end-to-end support from production to aggregation, processing, and market linkages. Shared machinery, collective logistics, storage, and value addition reduce energy use, transport emissions, and post-harvest losses. This business-to-society model embeds climate mitigation within farmer-owned institutions, ensuring durable emission reductions, inclusive livelihoods, and scalable climate impact.

How Project Affects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

['Replaces/avoids GHGs (e.g., projects that replace sources of GHGs, such as the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, transport, or other energy uses)', 'Reduces GHGs (e.g., projects that reduce sources of GHGs, such as through efficiency or other changes in consumption)', 'Removes/stores GHGs (e.g., projects that capture, sequester, or otherwise enhance the "sinks" that accumulate and store GHGs)']

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

The project empowers smallholder farming communities in hill and rural regions. A large share of participating farmers are women, who play roles in soil management, composting, seed selection, and crop residue management. The project strengthens women’s agency by prioritising their participation in trainings, on-farm demonstrations, and collective decision-making through farmer groups and FPO-linked platforms. It also reaches marginal and smallholder farmers with limited landholdings, for whom input-intensive, high-emission models are economically and ecologically unviable.

Women and smallholder farmers serve on farmer committees, peer learning groups, and leadership structures guiding planning, adoption, and monitoring. By combining local knowledge with climate-resilient practices, underrepresented communities become active contributors to climate solutions, not beneficiaries.

Forty-four ISRN-promoted FPOs participated virtually in the launch of the PM Dhan Dhaanya Krishi Yojana on October 11, 2025. At the New Delhi event, Mr. Fayaz Ahmad Ganayee, Director of Zazna Farmer Producer Company Ltd., Ganderbal, J&K, interacted with the Hon’ble Prime Minister.

Several ISRN-supported FPOs have women-led boards, including INWAANYAN Nagri Organic Farmers Producer Company Limited, Uttar Pradesh, and Shri Bhadraj Sahaspur Farmer Producer Company Limited, Uttarakhand, with an all-women board recognised on International Women’s Day 2025. Women members lead value-added enterprises that increase incomes through low-emission local processing.