In mid-September, Bernard Giraud (President and Co-founder of Livelihoods Funds) and Amla Natarajan (Senior Project Manager for India at Livelihoods Funds) were welcomed again to Araku Valley. Beyond their intention of spending time in the field and touching base with Naandi’s leadership and operations teams, their visit reaffirmed to all the nature of the Naandi-Livelihoods partnership: a collaboration that spans over a decade, driving regenerative agriculture and landscape transformations across Araku of Andhra Pradesh – one of India’s most picturesque yet underdeveloped regions.
Naandi played a crucial role in the inception of the Livelihoods Funds – the coming together of a consortium of European multinationals in support of sustainable, community-based livelihoods projects across the world. Livelihoods has worked in several countries to generate sustainable impacts in regions affected by rural poverty and environmental degradation, and Naandi is one of its key partners in India. This partnership began in 2009 with the ambitious Araku Livelihoods Project, geared towards farmer livelihoods, biodiversity and tree planting, soil enrichment, and carbon sequestration.
Key to the success of the Araku Livelihoods Project was its innovative approach, blending traditional knowledge of forest-based agriculture with scientific techniques of composting and economies of scale. Since the project’s inception, farmers have been supported with diverse supplies of saplings as well as training and bio-inputs to plant various fruit and forest trees alongside coffee bushes for reforestation and shade diversification. Additional support was provided for improving yields and overall quality of traditional crops, which not only provided reliable, diverse sources of income, but also enhanced soil health and captured significant amounts of carbon. The strategies and learnings from this early project were crucial in the development of Naandi’s Arakunomics framework and the PQR system of agriculture, which fetches profits for farmers, quality for consumers, and regeneration for soils and environments.
Following his fulfilling and productive visit, Bernard shared a message with the Naandi’s core team in Araku, which we post here for readers:
“My dear friends. Back in Paris, we have a few words to share with Anupama and the great Naandi team. Thank you for your warm welcome to me and Amla. It has been a privilege for us to spend some time (it is always too short) in the Valley with you and the communities. And, dear Manoj, it is so touching to celebrate our 20 years of friendship.
These amazing stories which have linked our lives and our work together could not happen and last without deep mutual trust and understanding. I have been very impressed by Naandi’s efforts on the field level – to focus efforts and resources on farmers’ engagement, tree monitoring, and adoption of best practices. Although we have faced serious difficulties and disappointments together, the implementation of corrective actions we agreed on some time ago is very encouraging. The open and transparent discussions we had on both commercial strategy to valorise local productions and how Naandi and Livelihoods team could work more in a cooperation mode were very useful to me.
Thank you very much for that. “
