This thematic area addresses the issues of natural resource management and livelihoods in the rural areas as the rationale is that the bulk of the rural people mostly derive their livelihoods by carrying out their production and collection activities interacting with the natural resource base.
Under this area, the Trusts have identified the following issues as thrust areas:
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Food security at the household, meso- and macro-level. While food security at the macro level results from augmenting food production; food security at the household level can come from both increasing household food production as well as by increasing the household income through expanding and strengthening its other livelihoods options and improving market access to the produce from households. Augmentation of food production in turn occurs through improving productivity of land through watershed development, irrigation, improvement in agronomic practices and introducing new crop combinations and cropping techniques.
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Ecological security, including in particular, efforts at ensuring efficient and equitable use of water. Working towards ecological security includes biodiversity conservation, strengthening technical and social measures for regeneration of fragile ecologies and contributing towards a more prudent and sustainable use of natural resources.
Efforts are afoot also to shift the grant making focus towards the more needy areas in the central, eastern and north-eastern regions. This is the result of a review in 2005 which had noted that until then, much of Trusts’ grant making in the theme had occurred in Western and Southern India.
Based upon the new strategy many of the Trusts’ efforts are now focused towards two broad thematic areas of Food Security and Ecological Security. Also there has been a focus shift towards livelihood interventions with a market-led approach. Geographically, a lot of new projects have been initiated in the perennially poverty-stricken belts of northern, central, eastern and north-eastern regions. The grant making strategy is also gradually shifting towards a programmatic approach and significant among the programs that the Trusts have mounted, is a national program on promoting System of Rice Intensification (SRI) resulting in bringing in a various players together under a banner, which looks after the issue of food security at the household level. Read more
Similarly, a program on tapping the potential of diversion based irrigation (DBI) was been launched in the latter part of 2008. This initiative too envisages addressing the food security issue with a minimal investment towards creating irrigation infrastructure, agriculture promotion and command area development. Ideas on the line of small ruminants (particularly goat), renewal energy sources (particularly micro hydel), capitalizing on forest-based livelihoods and to strengthen community conservation efforts are on the way of getting shaped in programmatic mode.
SRI Program :
During 2006-07, the Trusts conducted a detailed scan of the country on various issues for creating a strategic plan for the next five years. Taking into account, 21 different indicators including agricultural productivity, it generated a district-level human development index covering 596 districts. On the parameters of Income (other parameters being on Health and Education), a district index indicated that many districts in the eastern and central parts of the country were very backward. Since in the rural areas, a major portion of income is generated from farm activities, it was decided to launch a comprehensive program on ensuring food security aiming at small and marginal land holders. Based upon experiments already piloted through NGOs in eastern India and a comprehensive study conducted by a team led by a renown rice breeder in India, the Trusts decided to launch a program on System of Rice Intensification (SRI) targeting the small and marginal farmers.
Progress made so far:
Thus far, the strategy has been to reach out to a maximum number of small and marginal farmers. For achieving this, a two-track strategy has been implemented of building a cadre of trained people and also of reaching out to a plethora of civil society organizations through nodal agencies. The coverage during the kharif of 2008 has been 30,198 households tilling 6,635 acres of land. This has been achieved in eight states spanning 74 districts. In about half of the districts, SRI has been introduced for the first time. Other salient achievements of the initiative are as below:
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About 80 percent of the farmers covered under this program are small and marginal farmers and they come from rainfed areas without proper irrigation infrastructures. A sample survey of more than 4,000 farmers in the states of Uttrakhand, Orissa, Jharkhand and Assam has suggested that there has been 76 percent incremental yield in rice production under this program over conventional method of rice cultivation.
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The Trust could reach out to a total of 120 agencies for extension of SRI in the field.
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SRI has been adopted in various agro-climatic zones ranging from sea-level fields (Sunderbans) to 2,200 meters above mean sea-level (at Tehri Garhwal).
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In Orissa, the state government has come up with a Government Order for promoting SRI throughout the state with the help of the Trusts’ partners. In Uttarakhand the Department of Agriculture is providing financial assistance to the Trusts’ partners for SRI promotion.
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The Trusts also supported organizing the Second and Third National Symposium on SRI in India. Additionally, first ever state-level SRI symposiums were organized in Assam, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand with active support from the Trusts.
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The Trusts run an e-group on SRI which has 314 members. It is meant for exchanging ideas.
Grants 2007-08: Refer to pages 34 to 41 in the Natural Resource Management and Rural Livelihood section in Annual Report 2008-09
This thematic area addresses the issues of natural resource management and livelihoods in the rural areas as the rationale is that the bulk of the rural people mostly derive their livelihoods by carrying out their production and collection activities interacting with the natural resource base. 
