Started in 2009In 2009, to enhance agricultural productivity of millions of hectares of rainfed areas in the state of Karnataka, ICRISAT in partnership with the Department of Agriculture (DoA) and State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) developed a scaling-up model called “Bhoochetana” (soil rejuvenation). Bhoochetana seeks to unlock the potential of rainfed agriculture towards improving rural livelihoods and achieving food and nutrition security while protecting the environment. In Bhoochetana, soil health assessment is used as an entry point to plan sciencebased interventions which can result to tangible benefits for the farmers by converging sustainable technologies to increase productivity of farm households with effective integrated watershed management approach.
AchievementsBhoochetana, a mission mode program implemented across the 30 districts of Karnataka, India increased crop yields by 23-66% as compared to farmers’practice through the adoption of soil-test based nutrient management recommendations along with quality seeds of high-yielding cultivars, and soil and water conservation measures. The total area covered by the program within four years was 3.73 million ha. The program has proven that improved management systems are vital in building the resilience of the farming systems in spite of normal or below normal rainfall in the state. The economic returns for every dollar invested by the farmers ranged from 2.1 to 14.6 in 2011. In the years 2011 and 2012, the combined gross value of increased agricultural production in the state was US$ 234 million, despite the fact that 2012 was a drought year with 26% deficit rains in the state.
The Bhoo Chetana (land rejuvenation) project has been working on improving the livelihoods of farmers. Despite poor rains in 2011, three million farmers saw their yields increase by up to 66 percent, bringing in extra profits of USD 130 million.
ICRISAT scientists along with NARS partners trained farmers to conduct 'soil health check-ups'. By missing nutrients farmers have seen better harvests.
Guruswami and Shanta started growing azolla fern in small ponds to use as soil fertiliser as well as to enrich the feed for their livestock. 'Our cows have been giving us half a litre more milk since we started adding this to their feed and their milk has more fat,' they say.
The farmer facilitators, a village level agricultural extension agents, makes sure that the farmers know about and use the Bhoo Chetana methods.
The Karnataka government along with ICRISAT is trying to change this and make small farms more productive, diverse and resilient to drought.
About ICRISAT
ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world.
Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid tropics have over 2 billion people, and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower these poor people to overcome poverty, hunger, malnutrition and a degraded environment through better and more resilient agriculture.
ICRISAT is headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana, India, with offices in Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Kenya, Malawi,Mozambique, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. ICRISAT is a member of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food secure future.
About IDC
IDC bridges the gap between pilot-level and proof-of-concept scale to large scale impact, by focusing on whole community adoption and large-scale uptake. This involves both scaling up and scaling out of proven and scalable technologies.
This is the large scale translational part of R4D that integrates the technologies and products into ‘packages’ along with integrating the enabling policies, institutional support and required knowledge, skills and capacity, and institutional support that are needed for achieving impact.
