SACRED is implementing the Low Carbon Farming (LCF) unique program along with 4 other Participant NGOs. SACRED has embarked on a project to leverage domestic & international Carbon Markets to support scaled up Sustainable Agriculture activities on 4,000 hectares of land in Bidadi District, Karnataka. This will be scaled up to cover 50% of the farmers that SACRED works with.
Under collaboration and support of with Environment Defense Fund (EDF), USA and Fair Climate Network (FCN) EDF – FCN.
LCF supports sustainable farming by encouraging farmers to adopt practices that reduce/minimize/remove the use of synthetic fertilizers while, at the same time, improving soil carbon content. This is done through reduced tillage, anaerobic composting, using organic fertilizers, mulching, intercropping, multi-cropping, and a horde of techniques specially designed for particular regions, populations and climatic zones.
Low Carbon Farming is a strategy to incentivize small and marginal farmers with Carbon Revenues, to reduce High External Input Destructive Agriculture (HEIDA) and adopt Sustainable Agriculture with Carbon Revenues. Three other Economic drivers that root for Sustainable Agriculture (SA) are
Increased Yield
Decreased Input Costs and
Improved Price for Sustainable Agriculture (SA) produce
As the Low Carbon Farming Technology has changed into Cool Farming Technology, we are not practicing it with the farmers and we promote farmers to practice organic farming techniques with the provision of desi seed from the seed bank promoted by SACRED.
This project is executed in 45 villages in Magadi and Ramnagara taluk of Ramnagara district. Under this project, 2500 acres are covered. 3000 plots are covered under 2500 acres. 50 community volunteers are working in the ground to promote Low carbon farming practices. We have covered 1300 farmers. We have set up a Gas Chromatograph Lab to analyze Green House Gas Emissions from agricultural plots. Also, we have set up a reference Plot in Nijiyappanadoddi to measure Green House Gases emissions.
A specialized Green House Gas analysis laboratory was started in 2010, with funding and technical guidance from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Fair Climate Network (FCN) scientists and tech team. A green house gas laboratory can also be called Gas Analysis Laboratory or Gas Chromatography Laboratory. As the name suggests, Gas Chromatograph (GC) is the principal instrument in the lab. All other components such as gas cylinders, gas panels, UPS, AC, thermo-hygrometer etc., are either linked to GC or are to provide suitable laboratory conditions. The lab is mostly dry lab with GC, carrier gas cylinders, gas lines, purification panels (filters) and UPS.
Green house gases research experimental/reference plot or Ragi nitrous oxide flux monitoring plot has been set up in Nijapanadoddi, a village in Ramanagara. In this plot Low Carbon Farming/Sustainable agricultural practice(LEISA) and Main stream agricultural practices (HEIDA) have been implemented and the green house gases emissions that is produced from this two different practices has been measured.
Green house gases sample collection is been practised in this plot, we use Perspex/Acrylic boxes of different dimensions for gas sample collection.
Gas samples are collected using 60 mL BD syringes and are analysed in the lab on the same day of sample collection, for recording different concentrations of gases for that day Gas sampling happens around rainfall events, fertilizer/manure application or any other farm management activities.
This initiative is meant to tap carbon revenues from carbon markets to incentivize small and marginal farmers.