Dear friends, well wishers and readers,
On behalf of team tharunam, we wish you all a Very happy New Year. Let this New Year shower us with love, enthusiasm and more prosperous regenerative farming ecosystem. As usual, we are keeping our energies high for sustainable food production and climate action commitments. In the last three months, we have seen paradigm shift on agroforestry farming practice in my village and we have an exciting updates. The agroforestry farm which kanthari participants visited during the last quarter are in fruiting stage now. We surprised everyone with growing kashmiri ber apples in Godavari valley 🙂 Now, it became our beacon & spreading awareness among farmers. Other side, we successfully found millet market linkage for farmers since one of our ideas were selected for Indian Institute of millet research value addition programs. And other side, consumer side intervention of promoting food literacy is a continuous advocacy for us to impact the food choices and thus impact crop patterns on farmer level.
Dear friends, well-wishers and kind supporters, it is time for the fourth quarterly Newsletter of tharunam for the year 2022. Here, we are happy to share the activities of tharunam from past three months
International Year of Millets
The promotion and marketing of millet-based products, keeping in view the initiative of “International Year of Millets (IYOM)-2023” proposed by the Government of India to the United Nations, which is to be celebrated across the world. We are one of the organizations those who are intensively working with farmers on millets production. However, consumer side acceptance is also significant to increase demand.
Millet for all project of tharunam
Millet for All is one of the flagship projects of tharunam to make millet accessibility for everyone in different forms. We have been working on millet promotion from last five years. You can see some of our activity outcomes in following videos,
IIMR-Nutrihub – Our research contribution
Nutrihub TBISC is the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India supported Technology Business Incubator hosted by the Indian Institute of Millet Research, ICAR – IIMR, Hyderabad. Nutrihub is a unique and first of its kind organisation to cater start-ups needs in the Nutricereals sector of the country.
We are happy to share that one of our research works on millet based beverages is selected training and given as an opportunity to present prototype in front of distinguished millet experts. We are glad and delighted to attend training program at iimr @nutrihub on millet value addition and nutrition security. We are getting ready to play our small part to nurture millet ecosystem in the world.
Agroforestry Development status
The 18 months old agroforestry farm is creating impact on ground level. We are breaking the stereo types around benefits of multi crop farming and economic viability and nutritional security at farmer level. The effective team work and regenerative farming practices are taking our journey towards right direction.
Number of crops harvested from agroforestry farm so far is
Cow Pea, Horsegram, Blackgram, Green Gram, Kashmir Apple Ber
Harvesting of Kashmiri Apple Ber
These apples bers produced at our farm which located in the Godavari valley. Kashmiri Apple Ber is one of the of ber fruits which are sweeter in taste and offers abundance of nutrients. Ber fruits are low calorie fruits with dietary fibers, vitamin C and potent anti oxidants to keep infections at bay. Every week, we are harvesting about 40 kgs of ber fruits and we are expecting this will continue for 3-4 weeks. More than 20 farmers from neighbor farms visited our farm and enquired about natural crop management.
Gov officials visit
Village secretary and one Agri officer visited our farm and congratulated us for putting quality efforts into quality plant selection and propagation while ensuring nutritional security and economic viability.
Selling fruits in domestic market & Taste acceptance and assurance of nutritional security
Kashmiri Apple ber fruits taste is highly accepted by customers and we have seen demand for fruits from both rural and urban markets. However, we are facing critical challenges in logistics and shelf life of fruits. We are exploring the ideal post harvesting options for more economic returns on fruits for farmers.
Gumbo Majubwa, founder and director at ambakofi from Tanzania
We are glad and grateful for Gumbo Majubwa, founder & director at Ambakofi organization in Tanzania. He visited our model agroforestry farm in village and appreciated our work. You can hear what Gumbo thoughts on our agroforestry farm
New friends
Hey! Hey! Hey!
Three more new friends joined with tharunam. Yes! Vaci, Quantum, Jujube introduced to our farm at the age of 45 days old. It is overwhelming to see the new team members and their support.
Meeting with AGROFORESTRY practitioner Buddies
Meet Sidhesh Sakore in Hyderabad who is on a visit to attend conference in Hyderabad. Sidhesh is a founder at agrorangers, discussed the contemporary agrarian challenges and role of agroforestry in addressing those challenges
Another friend, Neeraj, founder at Khetee organization who is a practitioner and propagator of agroforestry in Bihar
Food Literacy awareness program in rgniyd,
On Dec 13, we received an invitation from Department of Social work & Sociology and placement cell to interact with students of RGNIYD regarding food literacy and ecopreneurship opportunities.
We are grateful to Dr. Sibnath Deb, Director of Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Dr. Sharmistha Bhattacharjee, Head of Department of Sociology and Dr. S Kumaravel, Head of Department of Social Work and Dr.Rambabu Botcha, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work and Placement Officer for giving us an opportunity to interact with 80+ students and faculty members.
Icrisat visit
During the millet value addition program at India Institute of Millet Research, we got an opportunity to visit ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) and interact with experts at Agribusiness incubation center
Dear Friends, well-wishers and supporters, the tharunam activities would not be possible without your support and contributions. Therefore, on behalf of all, we say thank you very much for your ongoing support. Thank you also by sharing this newsletter in your circle.
Stay safe! Stay healthy! Have a healthy food!
With Green Regards,
Team Tharunam
www.tharunam.org
Email- founder@tharunam.org
Great work.Keep going.