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Center for Sustainable Agriculture Research and Development (C- SARD)
C- SARD has its office at 1151/58A, 4th lane, in Rajagiriya and located within the Movement for National Land and Agriculture Reforms(MONLAR) premises. where the latter serves as C-SARD's mother organization. The objective of C-SARD is to improve the livelihoods of small farmers in Sri Lanka, through building local capacities of small farmers and farmer organizations, enabling them to demand their rights and propose concrete alternative to policy makers.
Who identified the problem?
In 2003 MONLAR undertook a widespread consultation process to identity existing alternative approaches to agriculture in Sri Lanka and to research the problems and constrains these small farmers are facing. The consultation engaged in implementing concrete alternatives to high input agriculture and the interim report identified amongst others, that:
- Networking amongst organizations is extremely important, including developing relationships with organizations outside Sri Lanka on sustainable agriculture.
- There is a need for awareness raising of environmental human hazards of high input and chemical farming in Sri Lanka.
- There is a need for policy influence linking grass roots to national levels. Need to do advocacy to achieve recognition for sustainable agriculture, and develop a policy document for this
- Both farmers and field workers need further access to information on sustainable agriculture. Majority expressed a wish for further training on sustainable agriculture.
The expected output of the project:
1. Small farmers are more aware of their rights to food, and their right to participate in policy making.
2. Organization of small farmers are strengthened through intensive training and continued networking with other organizations in Sri Lanka.
3. Small farmers understand the benefits of sustainable agriculture as a way to decrease dependency from expensive inputs.
4. Small farmers increasingly adopt low input farming practices.
5. The impact of agricultural and land policies in Sri Lanka on small farmers are documented and used in advocacy activities.
6. Information on sustainable agriculture alternatives in countries outside Sri Lanka is experienced, documented and disseminated inside Sri Lanka and need for advocacy activities.
The SARD programme constitutes mainly of 03 components namely training, research and the local organization/ village.
a. Organization/ Village
The training is designed for village leaders and farmer field facilitators (FFF's) who will be selected from each village as representative by the community. The FFFs will play a crucial role in strengthening the organizations and bring different organizations closer together. They are working with small farmers in the field on a daily basis.
b. Training
The training in both theoretical and practical and geared towards supporting their activities in the field. The training will include;
1. The information on globalization and impact of globalization on small farmers in Sri Lanka.
2. Rights to food and obligation of the state
3. Skilled training on Sustainable agriculture technologies including the following aspects,
Agro ecological practices such as,
a. compost , liquid fertilizer and wormy compost making
b. water harvesting.
c. soil erosion control
d. manipulation of micro climate in favor of crop growth.
e. enhancing bio diversity, mixed farming and agro forestry.
f. Seed conservation and seed exchange distribution
4. Marketing of produce in the village or local markets
c. Research
Impact of field activities conducted by the community are documented through monitoring process once in six months by a team of researchers employed by C- SARD. Both physical and impact indicators have been developed and used to measure the progress of all activities. The data are provided for both the training workshops and for the development of the national plan for sustainable agriculture and in subsequent advocacy activities.
What is the coverage
The project is working with small farmers and their organizations in the three main climatic regions in Sri Lanka mainly dry (60%), wet (20%), and intermediate (20%). C-SARD has focused to work with 125 villages covering 03 regions over the five year period and already 75 such villages have been develop. At least 30 – 40 villagers from every village actively participate in activities
SARD is publishing a bimonthly newsletter 'VARUNA' and is distributed to farmer organizations, government departments, policy makers and academics. The publication includes agricultural policy analysis, success stories and example of sustainable agriculture in other countries as well as in Sri Lanka.
'VARUNA' has a separate section for articles written in Tamil.
Lionel Weerakoon
Chief Advisor
