ISAP SGSY Skill Development Programs

ISAP – SGSY is a new-economy livelihood promotion-training program which is exclusively custom-designed for the school dropouts/ unemployed secondary school graduates/ street youth/ retrenched workers/ migrant youth/ resettlement community members from the poorest of the poor i.e. last 15% of the Indian population. The program supports both employment opportunity oriented workforce preparation. The curriculum is designed after extensive market research and in conformity with the market needs. The curriculum and practical training modules are tailor-made based on valuable inputs from the industry professionals, academicians and various associations.

Thus through a short term course training module of 3 months the youths are made market ready to take up jobs in their field of training. Through this program, we aim to train 5000 youth from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa have to be trained as on 2011 and thereby provide employment opportunities.

We are committed to train and place the youth of 18-35 years of age group belonging from below poverty Line strata. ...more

Project Share – Sustainable Livelihood Program

Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) is carrying out Project Share – a sustainable livelihood program in partnership with Monsanto, in three states, viz., Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. ISAP has already carried out successfully large scale front line demonstrations of good agriculture practices for cotton and maize crop in selected areas during kharif 2009–10 season, through the Ministry of Agriculture’s Technology Mission on Cotton and on Maize. Taking up now the initial steps under the Project Share, ISAP will be closely working with farmers to help them improve their crop yields and for guiding them towards sustainable livelihood. A total of 1050 villages aggregated into 350 clusters have been selected in target areas. Beneficiaries will be selected from these clusters/villages. Around 225 nukkad sabha/village level street corner meetings were organized in December month in Boondi, Bhilwara (Rajasthan) and Amravati (Maharashtra) to spread the message regarding implementing of the Project Share. In due course, after conducting these meetings followed by Farmers’ Awareness Camps, beneficiary farmers will be identified from the target villages / clusters.

OCP AES Program

The Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals has, with the support of OCP (Morocco) – world’s largest phosphate producing company - launched an Agriculture Extension Service (AES) Project for the improvement of pigeonpea production in three districts of Karnataka, viz., Bidar, Gulberga and Raichur in May 2010. Gulberga is the district with highest production of pigeonpea in the country, with more than 7 lakh ha area under this crop, and a productivity of about 4 q /ha. Under the project 3000 farmers will be directly associated with the OCP-AES project. Of these, 100 farmers are identified as ‘lead farmers’ who will lead a group of 30 farmers each. The lead farmers will conduct demonstration to raise productivity of pigeonpea in the vicinity of their respective locations.

At the outset, soil samples of the project farmers were collected and analysed which shows that most of them are deficient in almost all major and minor nutrients – N, P, K, Bo, Fe, Zn, and S. This clearly explains the low yields in the project area as attributable to inadequate nutrition of the crop. The demonstrations have therefore been designed to provide full complement of fertilizer / nutrients which is likely to ensure that optimum yields are obtained at the farm. To keep a dynamic record of the soil health each farmer will be provided a soil health card with advisory details on how to improve the same while adopting a particular pigeonpea- based cropping pattern. Soil analysis for samples from 500 samples representing different kinds of soil types in the entire project area geography, have been also analysed and the related advisory has been provided to the concerned project farmers. A unique feature of the cultivation practices is the transplantation technology in pigeonpea, which is the latest and highly productive. It is expected that this technology will almost substantially increase pigeonpea production under assured rainfall or irrigated conditions in the project geography. The farmers have also been advised to grow mungbean or other intercrops so as to enhance their incomes from the same field.

Since the monsoon rains in this territory have been delayed, only about 20% farmers have planted their crop in Raichur district, about 10% in Bidar and about 5 % in Gulberga. It is expected that sowings with recommended package of practices will be completed by 15 July 2010.

India Certified Crop Adviser Program

ISAP and American Society of Agronomy have come together to offer Certification in the field on Agriculture Extension – called the “CCA”. It is for the first time that such an initiative has been taken in India. In fact, the CCA Program is being offered outside America and Canada for the first time. The program received support from BMGF, World Bank and USAID in its India lap journey.

The Indian Program has been suitably indigenized in collaboration with 23 scientists from 10 of the renowned agricultural research organizations and institutes including PAU, HAU, ICAR, IIT and so forth. Following a pilot held in August 2010, the first certification test was held on 12 December 2010 and it was received with enthusiastic participation from 13 of the largest Agri Input Companies. As many as 85 candidates appeared for this exam. The CCA Program promises to be the most effective intervention to improve the quality of Farm Advisory in the country and provide a fillip to this much impoverished area. The main plank of the program, in addition to the certification by American Society of Agronomy, is Continuous Education. The Program strives to improve the quality of farm advisory to the farmers, continuously update the knowledge base in agriculture extension, ensuring dissemination of relevant and latest information on farm practices and bringing professionalism in agriculture so that it would attract better talent and is a career of choice for the new youngsters.

Agri-Clinic Agribusiness Program

ISAP is running Entrepreneurship Development Program in 9 states under the aegis of MANAGE. This training is provided to unemployed agriculture and allied sector graduates. After training, ISAP provides active hand-holding support to these trained agripreneurs for the setting up their own business venture. ISAP has so far trained 2181 agri-preneurs in Assam, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, J&K, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Punjab.

Kisan Call Centre- Bhopal

A Kisan Call Center is run by ISAP under the aegis of the M.P. government in Bhopal. The Call Center was inaugurated by State Agriculture Minister Sh Gopal Bhargav ji on September 2, 2008. Queries of farmers across the state are responded to by agriculture experts during 7 am to 7 pm daily. This KCC is working 7 days a week. Farmers in the state can make calls to KCC experts at toll free number i.e. “1800-233-4433” for their farm-specific queries and responded live by agriculture experts. This call center receives average 600-650 queries on daily basis. Farmers make calls to these experts for following information –

-          Disease and pest control of different crops grown in the state

-          Good Agricultural Practices, livestock management, Fishery etc

-          Good Agricultural practices for agriculture crops, horticulture crops, medicinal and aromatic plants, spices, plantation crops, cash crops etc

-          Vermi-compost, organic farming, including organic plant protection,etc

-          Information on hybrid seeds and nutrient management of different crops

-          Market related information for different crops in the state

-          Farmer support programs being implemented by the MP govt.

-          And other such agri-related information that effect farmers and farming practices

ISAP also has started a helpline for both consumers and producers in MP state to address their problems related to organic farming and organic products. Both farmers and consumers can call the experts on toll free number (1800 233 44 33) to look for solutions to their queries. Organic products are generally sold at premium. There is a niche market developing among an elite consumer segment for organic products. But still consumers have lot of apprehensions about the product and techniques adopted in its production particularly because there is little awareness about the basic characteristics of the organic products. At the same time, farmers also need regular assistance of experts during critical stages in the production process as they too are not fully aware about the certification processes and regulations. Experts at ISAP KCC are receiving queries on plant protection techniques from the farmers particularly as they like to know more about organic methods of controlling pests say in cucurbits, okra etc., and organic techniques of controlling premature dropping of flowers & leaves in papaya.

Community Radio Station (CRS)

Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) has set up first Community Radio Station (CRS) for farmers at Sironj, District Vidisha (Madhya Pradesh). Sironj is located about 120 km North of Bhopal, the Capital of Central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh. ISAP started its development initiatives in this region with farm-extension activities. While working at grass-root level with farmers of this region, ISAP realized the increasing need of effective ICT medium to bridge the huge information gap. Radio seems to be only effective medium, which farmers/rural community can easily afford, understand and use to establish their link with the outside world and to learn newest technologies and other advancements. With this viewpoint, ISAP established CRS at Sironj

Query Redressal Services (QRS)

QRS is an innovative tool for ICT-based agricultural extension system. It aims towards improving farm productivity by delivering high quality personalized (farm-specific) expert advice in timely manner to each farmer. This service is based on an Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), where in farmers can register their queries by dialing a dedicated number. ‘Soochna-Se-Samadhan’ is a programme owned by OWSA and funded by CISCO and British Telecom. This is facilitated through ISAP field coordinators and ISAP experts provide answers to these queries within 24 hours. The program is being run in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The QRS team at ISAP includes agriculture experts like Entomology, Pathology, Agronomy, Animal Husbandry etc. More than 10,000 queries per month from 280 villages are responded under this program. QRS offers an agricultural extension tool, which supplements and integrates into the existing agricultural extension system. An impact analysis study has shown marked improvement in productivity, reduced crop damage thereby enhancing the overall profitability of the farmers.