CARD | Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development

Famers Awareness Program

CARD creates an alternative, socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. Farmer Facilitation Programs have served as an instrument for agricultural and rural transformation in terms of contributing meaningfully to agricultural and rural growth.

Digital Financial Awareness Campaigns

CARD provides digital financial literacy training and facilitates easy access to such instruments for rural communities. Creating Awareness and Access through CARD, aims to enable the rural masses to become digitally and financially stable, by hosting awareness sessions on government policies and digital finance options available for rural citizens.

Climate Awareness Campaigns

Climate change; the increased frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and storms— is the most challenging issue of our age. CARD’s Climate Awareness Campaigns showcase innovative ways in which farmers around the country are adapting their practices to become more and more climate smart. Inter-cropping, multiple cropping, and crop rotation are some of the practices that the farmers are using to fight climate change.

Farmers Industry Campaigns

It is only through an agro-industrial revolution that India can hope to transform the rural economy and move on from the bullock cart economy. CARD facilitates the Indian industry to join hands with the country’s farmers to create synergy and growth. The link-up with industry helps farmers effectively put across their problems to the authorities and also prepare them for global competition.

FPO Development

CARD, with support from SFAC, intends to facilitate the formation of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) in U.P, Assam and HR states of India. The FPO is seen as an institution that will ultimately increase returns for farmers by ensuring that they organize themselves. The mandate is to create self-sustaining livelihood options in the emerging green sectors. To facilitate this, CARD has been supporting and initiating efforts aimed at the development of rural farm and non-farm enterprises. The program aims to reach 20000 farmers in a span of three years across 3 states of India. The program will promote producer companies/cooperatives of farmers producing food grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy etc. CARD provides handholding support to FPOs in building their capacity and upgrading their skills. In addition, the farmers also receive guidance in managing the FPOs smoothly. Apart from this, technical training and assistance are also provided. The farmers are also linked with the input suppliers as well as the market.

Linkage with Government

We bring the committee members with government departments so that proper support and communication platform can be formed. This also helps in dispute resolution and faster execution of interventions.

Market Access

We develop market linkages of the FPOs so that the product they are creating can fetch fair price and credit is available at the required time frame.

High Value Cropping

Many high-value fruit and vegetable crops may require significant initial investment in order to put in the necessary infrastructure, and may have a lead-in period of several years before any income is generated. In addition, there are also opportunities to create added value by investing further down the supply chain, in processing and packaging enterprises, and we also have expertise in advising on and managing such projects.

Schemes & Subsidies

CARD aims to spread awareness about existing government schemes and subsidies for agriculture, using ICT/non-ICT tools, among the rural masses and enable them to derive benefits from the same. CARD facilitates information flow and management of public schemes for citizen empowerment and good governance in rural parts of the country.

Quality Planting Materials

The importance of the best quality planting material as an initial investment is a well realized factor for persons engaged in Horticulture. Therefore, nurseries have a great demand for the production of plants, bulbs, rhizomes, suckers & grafts. But in general, good quality & assured planting material at reasonable price is hardly available. CARD, partnered with various institutions, encourages the use of quality planting materials and also trains people possessing a skill of propagation of quality plantlets in nursery to grow this avenue into a potential business venture.