Despite India’s agricultural activities contributing to approximately 16% of GDP, small land holder farmers (SLHF) continue to suffer from economic setbacks. With up to 70% of Indian farmers reportedly hold less than 2 acres of land, and therefore classified SLHF, income diversification for these farmers has proved challenging. These obstacles are further affected by a low uptake of financial instruments (FI) such as loans and insurance, and the degradation of environmental resources (ER) like soil, water, and air quality. Moreover, as current carbon credit programs apply to more large-scale agricultural projects, such as organic produce, bamboo, or forestry, SLHFs are invariably unsuited to these initiatives, as the cost involved in their implementation often outweighs the incentive.
To that end, this project shall contribute to the mitigation of these challenges through harnessing the influence and impact of the Resource Nexus (RN) to restructure financial instruments and make them accessible to SLHFs to increase the adoption of good agricultural practices (GAP).
By utilising a Resource Nexus approach, this project aims to generate knowledge and policy recommendations, the outcome of RENFIN will support the streamlining of funds from the public and private sectors to the SLHF, while establishing nexus-related practices at these farms. This shall result in those funds currently used in activities that negatively affect the environment (as defined by the State of Finance for Nature by UNEP) being reassigned to fund the adoption of GAP in India. The project shall contribute to several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely SDG2 (Good Agricultural Practices), SDG5 (Gender Equality), SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG12 (Responsible Production and Consumption).
The RENFIN project is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
