18 November 2011
No. 1493
Participants of the ICRISAT-IFAD Project review and planning meeting at Patancheru.
Improving livelihoods of smallholder farmers
ICRISAT-IFAD Project leads partners in harnessing the full potential of legumes Legumes are known as the “poor people’s meat,” supplying up to 13% of the daily protein requirement for hundreds of millions of smallholder families. Legumes also help reduce land degradation through sustainable intensification, regeneration of nutrient-deficient soils through nitrogen fixation, and most importantly, improving the livelihoods of smallholder households, as shown by ICRISAT and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in India, Nepal and Vietnam.
T
he project review and planning meeting of the ICRISAT-IFAD Project on “Harnessing the true potential of legumes: Economic and knowledge empowerment of poor rainfed farmers in Asia” was held at ICRISAT-Patancheru on 14-16 November. With three country partners – India, Nepal and Vietnam – the Project spearheads the selection and identification of farmer-preferred varieties of groundnut, chickpea, pigeonpea and other legumes
and their production technologies through farmer participatory research. In his inaugural message, Director General William Dar said, “The participation of India, Nepal and Vietnam in this IFAD Project ensured a wide sharing of technologies among countries, bringing in significant synergy in our efforts to help alleviate poverty by increasing legumes productivity in rainfed Asia.“ The Project”, he added, “has to page 2 ...4