Krushna's Blogs

  Project CONSERV in Brazil: Protecting Forests While Boosting Farmers’ Income In South America, Brazil’s Amazon–Cerrado region—covering about 2 million km² (roughly 20% of Brazil’s land area)—forms a transition zone between the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado savanna, a grassland region. It is a biodiversity hotspot, a vast carbon store, and the source of major rivers that feed the Amazon River basin.  But this region is continuously threatened by deforestation for soybean production, cattle ranching, and agricultural expansion. As more forests are cleared to make way for crop cultivation, the region has begun to experience rising local temperatures, increasing water stress, and declining agricultural yields. Between 1985 and 2022, more than 13 percent of the Amazon–Cerrado Region was cleared for agriculture. Soybean production, an important crop of Brazil’s economy, drove much of this change.  In the short term, profits increased, but deforestation soon triggered ...

  PILA: A Participatory Approach Linking Extension and Landscape Governance to Tackle Climate Change Climate change and deforestation are today’s greatest challenges. Forests provide water, regulate local climates, protect biodiversity, and support millions of people with food, wood, and livelihoods. But agricultural activities, logging, and human expansion continuously threaten these vital ecosystems.  To address these challenges, innovative approaches are needed. One such approach is the Participatory Informed Landscape Approach (PILA), developed and promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). What is the Participatory Informed Landscape Approach (PILA)? PILA is a multi-stakeholder, evidence-based method for integrated landscape management. It collects and analyzes data from satellite imagery and household surveys to understand the real situation on the ground. It creates platforms for dialogue , where farmers, governments, local...

  APAIMS 2.0: Imagine Farmers Getting Early Alerts with Instant Solutions for Better Farming Indian farming and farmers face many challenges every day—from cultivation to harvesting, marketing, and post-processing. At the same time, agriculture is evolving, with many efforts being made to develop technologies and solutions that make Indian agriculture more profitable and easier.  Among these, digital applications, especially those powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), are taking the lead. A good example of this can be seen in Andhra Pradesh.  To make farming more efficient and farmer-friendly, the Andhra Pradesh state government launched the Andhra Pradesh Agriculture Information and Management System (APAIMS) .  The purpose behind starting this platform was simple: to bring all agricultural services under one digital roof, make governance more transparent, and help farmers get faster support. Over time, the system has evolved, and today government have APAIMS 2...