Farmers for Forests is a not-for-profit with the audacious goal of revolutionizing India’s forestry sector to sequester carbon, support farmers, create green jobs and restore and protect fragile ecosystems.
By 2030, we will be sequestering
25 million tonnes of CO2 per year
=
emissions of 8+ million Indians per year
We believe that the only sustainable ecological restoration and conservation intervention is in partnership with rural communities
Our model has been covered by DW News and Scroll
farmersforforests Farmers for Forests COO Dr. Vaibhav Mahatme, who heads all our field operations, switched careers from public health to climate change. It was a big switch, considering he'd been in public health for nearly 8 years!
His reason for switching?
He realized how core climate change is not just to public health and nutrition, but also to so many other aspects like agriculture and livelihoods.
As an Ayurvedic doctor by training, I've always been taught to fix the root cause of the problem and not just focus on the symptoms. In the last few years, the more I worked in the field, the more I realized that climate change is the root cause of so many of our problems. I wanted to fix that, in whatever way I could.
His switch has, of course, not been easy. He's had to pick up on a whole lot of information quickly and learn a whole new lingo. This is where the @terra_dot_do course Climate Change: Learning for Action played an important role.
While it was not easy to learn while doing a full-time job, I'm grateful that courses like Terra's exist. It's made my transition into this sector so much easier by providing me with a comprehensive overview of everything that's important for a new climate change professional to know.
farmersforforests Our Co-Founders Krutika Ravishankar and Arti Dhar have penned their thoughts on something cool we have been experimenting on the ground- QR coding each and every tree in our new forests!
It's a mammoth task. But in this piece, we explain why it's important. For far too long, Nature has been sidelined due to lack of accountability and measurability. But if we need to scale-up forest-based solutions to climate change, we need to move away from claiming success at the tree planting stage- which is the easiest stage in our work. Real impact happens when trees and forests survive and grow long term in order to provide environmental benefits like carbon sequestration, soil conservation, groundwater recharge, etc.
As always, we look forward to your comments and feedback.
farmersforforests Our Field Associate Krushna Chaudhari at a Gram Panchayat meeting in Durgaon village last month (Ahmednagar District, Maharashtra), informing community members about the F4F afforestation model.
We are now about to begin a 6 acre afforestation project on unused and barren land here! We will be planting approx. 6000 native trees, that will provide both environmental benefits (like soil conservation and groundwater recharge) as well as supplemental income for farmers through the conditional financial support we provide and the harvest from the trees.
We will be provide updates once afforestation is complete. As always, we are so thankful to our field team!
You can donate to plant trees in our new forests here:
farmersforforests his is Nanabhau Mandge, pictured in front of his land pre-plantation. We recently completed a 11,000 tree plantation on 4 acres of his land that had been lying unused for years.
Agriculture is no longer feasible for him or his children to financially support their entire family. He's from Mengalwadi village in Ahmednagar District (Maharashtra), which is a drought-prone and arid region. Furthermore, climate change and rising termperatures has made it even harder for him and his family to put his land to any use.
Now that F4F has just planted 11,000 native trees that are best suited for local ecology (which are easier to grow than many crops), very soon he will be able to enjoy the harvest from his forest, while providing environmntal benefits like groundwater recharge and soil conservation to the larger community.
F4F is on a mission to transform India's climate change-victims like Nanabhau Mandge into tomorrow climate stewards.
farmersforforests F4F Co-Founder Krutika Ravishankar was recently a guest on the Land of a Billion podcast by The Quint and Property Rights Research Consortium.
The episode explores connection between land rights and climate change adaptation in India and around the world
farmersforforests It was an honor for the F4F team to meet Shri @rohit_rajendra_pawar_ (MLA representing Karjat-Jamkhed constituency in Maharashtra) and Shri Sunanda Tai Pawar.
We are excited to see the immense grassroots impact they have created under the Majhi Vasundhara Abhiyan and Samruddha Gaon programs.
F4F looks forward to working with them on leveraging the progress they have made to increase the forest contain in the Karjat-Jamkhed area of Ahmednagar District and create a carbon credit project in collaboration with them that will mitigate climate change and support green livelihoods and biodiversity.
farmersforforests Moments captures from our latest afforestation project in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra.
Transporting tree saplings to location, where they will grow to be beautiful sturdy trees in a thriving new biodiverse forest.
farmersforforests Friday just called. She'll be here tomorrow and she's bringing chai.
Happy (almost) Friday!
farmersforforests According to a 2015 World Bank report, climate change is an acute threat to poorer people across the world with the power to push more than 100 million people back into poverty by 2030. Regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, including India, will be hit the hardest.
The already economically vulnerable communities, like farmers, who rely more on Nature for their sustenance, will be increasingly dealing with landslides, floods and rising temperatures that will destroy their crops.
While the next 'hot' technology might help us sequester more carbon, what about the mass extinction we are currently experiencing? What about soil health? What about unprecedented biodiversity loss? What about depleting groundwater? In order to fight climate change at scale, you cannot ignore nature-based solutions.
Farmers for Forests grow long-surviving biodiverse forests that will fight climate change AND help economically vulnerable communities find other streams of revenue (such as from forest harvest) that are resilient to climate change
farmersforforests Our sweet mascot Maddie is supervising our field team. She needs to make sure our de-weeding machine works so our forests grow to be healthy and beautiful
farmersforforests Did you know: unused and degraded land, instead of storing carbon, become carbon emitters?
F4F team is about to commence new big afforestation projects in Ahmednagar District, Maharashtra. In this area, you will see a lot of abandoned and barren land, that was formerly farmland. Rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and unsustainable agricultural practices has made farming very difficult in this region.
The forests we grow will not only improve soil quality and ability to sequester carbon and enhance biodiversity, it will also create new incomes for the farmers that will be climate change-resilient (as opposed to traditional agriculture).
Each tree you donate to plant becomes part of these beautiful new forests.
farmersforforests Farmers for Forests (F4F) Co-founder @crewteaca.r recently spoke at the GeoSmart India Conference on the work F4F is doing protecting and restoring forests in Maharashtra in close collaboration with communities.
She spoke about the critical role forests play in the global water cycle and the pilot study being done in collaboration with J-PAL South Asia using @planetlabs satellite data to track the impact of payments for ecosystem services on preventing deforestation and encouraging reforestation in the Western Ghats in Raigad.