The Facilitating Agricultural Regeneration Measures (FARM) team reviewed its process and progress that intends to empower the community for nutritional food intake by improving the status of food sovereignty.

All the 16 partners presented their major key achievements during the review meet held at Tura, Meghalaya from 6-8^th June 2022. The presentations also included audio-visual evidence of community-managed traditional seed resource centres, climate adaptive farming initiatives, and low-cost indigenous storage practices widely accepted by the communities.

The team brainstormed to reflect on and recognize the key impacts and results achieved through the program interventions and learnt the process documentation to capture the learning for replication. One of the elements for consideration was collective action initiated by the community institutions to market the surplus produces which built their capacity to negotiate with market actors for a competitive price.

Prabal Sen, the Program Associates – Northeast Zone of Caritas India shared his specific input based on the achievement presented by each program team. He added on how to convert the indigenous seed resource centres into economic models by allowing farmers to sell seeds. He expressed his concern over the present status of shifting cultivation and urged the teams to support the cultivators with scientific interventions like SALT. He focused on the rampant land-use variations happening across the region in the name of cash crop cultivation, thus weaning away the farmers from their traditional forms of agricultural practices. He asserted adopting improved cultivation practices for better yield.

Pradipta Chand, the Climate Adaptive Agriculture and Food Sovereignty (CAA&FS) lead of Caritas India drew the attention of the program teams to improving the evidence-based documents, the key results, and the impact brought on the lives of small farm families. He also voiced to record the innovations and agro-ecological practices used by smallholders during the project period. He oriented the team on key strategy integration and process documentation.

“BAKDIL became one of the leading NGOs of the region recognized by state government agencies for their significant works done in the field of agriculture and social development,” said Fr. Sunny Mavelil, the Director of BAKDIL Meghalaya. He encouraged the participants by sharing many innovative practices done under the FARM programs. He also acknowledged the low-cost innovative practices introduced by the FARM program in the region which is accepted by the communities. He further thanked Caritas India for implementing such programs for the indigenous community to bring transformation in their lives to come.

The team visited Koksi-Sangma under BAKDIL, Meghalaya, one of the program villages to witness the achievements. The entire team was divided into two groups and had an on-farm exposure. The field had a multi-tier orchard plantation (Banana, Areca nut, Ginger, Beetle nuts, and seasonal vegetables like Brinjal, and Chilly as intercrop) where the team interacted and learnt how to plan and raise the orchard with a detailed cost-benefit analysis for their larger understanding. The team also learned about patterns of land use changes adopted by farmers for ensuring food security. It was a very insightful and inclusive review where each team member was exposed to the field realities and learnt how to document the change along with the process.