Fifteen members of Groundswell International, a multi-country civil society organisation, from 10 countries will be on a week-long visit to Anantapur district from Monday (September 19 to 25) to study the community-managed natural farming methodologies.
The Groundswell International will also organise its annual global conference with the leaders of the NGOs they partner with in 10 countries in West Africa, Latin America and Nepal, and staff, and some board members attending it in Anantapur, according to a release.
The State government, through the Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), has become a model for scaling up agroecology through natural farming in India and the world, the release says.
The RySS is working with several States in India and networks/countries in the world providing support for taking up natural farming in their areas of intervention.
The visit by the Groundswell team will facilitate knowledge exchange and cross-learning platform.
The team plans to do in-depth field visits and understand the work done by the RySS. These experiences will help them in preparing their strategic plan for 2023-28 and help in the transition to sustainable agriculture and local food ecosystems.
Field visits have been designed for the team to understand the natural farming technology, the involvement of women self-help groups in it, the model of farmer-to-farmer dissemination through the ‘community resource person model’, and government’s support for this transformation along with allocation of resources.
