A two-day regional workshop on Food Sovereignty was organised by Caritas India from October 26 to 27, 2021 at the silver jubilee memorial conference hall of Northeast diocesan social service societies, Guwahati. Altogether 76 participants of 16 partner organisations from all seven states have participated. 16 farmers stalls were installed by 16 partner organisations to showcase their organic farm produces as well as wild edibles under the FARM NE banner.

Dr Rituraj Phukan was the Chief Guest to grace the occasion along with Dr Pranab Bujarbarua, Asst Professor, Dept of Botany, Ms Jusmita Borah Environment Expert, Assam Inland Water Transport Project, Govt of Assam and Mr Mrinal Gohain, Regional Manager ActionAid, Fr. Dr Sabastian, Director NEDSSS Guwahati. To accompany the honourable guest speakers, Rev Dr Jolly Puthenpura Asst Executive Director, Ms Devi Kalyani Pattnaik Chief Operation Lead, Mr Pradipta Chand Lead-Climate Adaptive Agriculture and Food Sovereignty along with the Northeast Regional Caritas India team members were among them.

While sharing on the food and climate crisis, Dr Rituraj Pukhan raised concern over the present food habits by quoting the song “My home is where my food is grown” which drew the attention of the participants that we are not eating what we are growing. While sharing his message, he emphasises the importance of local seasonal food including wild edibles and encourages them to grow their food. Growing own food helps to maintain good health by reducing food miles, food waste and external dependency on the market for inputs. He showed the comparison of summer temperature from 1936 to 2021 and showed that the last 7 years were the hottest. Further, he stressed that the present food system is the greatest driver of biodiversity loss. So much orientation is needed to take adequate responsibility towards the conservation of natural resources and be mindfully used of the local biodiversity for the future generation.

In addition to this, Rev Dr Jolly Puthenpura shared about the current national situation in the context of food and farm biodiversity that, Smallholder farmers are one of the most vulnerable groups to climate change. They were hit hardest by climate change considering their small and fragmented landholdings. Scaling-up for resilience and adaptation through smallholder led integrated farming system, Caritas India has initiated adaptive models considering different agro-ecological climatic conditions of the region in consultation with the relevant regional research stations to ensure smallholder’s production, income, nutrition, resilience, and farmers control in the face of climate threats. Facilitating Agriculture and Regeneration Measures (FARM) is one of those flagship programmes of Caritas India being implemented in 7 states with 12,365 small and marginal farm families. The FARM has been able to create a remarkable impact in the lives of small farm families where smallholders are taking lead in creating sustainable models of agricultural development by enhancing their incomes.

Sharing about Caritas India’s initiative under the climate adaptive agriculture and food sovereignty theme, Mr Pradipta Kishor Chand has presented three evidence-based models on climate-resilient agriculture, community-managed food and nutrition and small-scale value chain of small-farm-agri-food. He shared about the relevance, effectiveness, and impact of the smallholder owned models experimented with within smallholder adaptive farming and biodiversity network.

Dr Pranab emphasized on promotion of the local farm biodiversity by diversifying the small farms with maximum local varieties inclusive of cereals, pulses, oilseeds and vegetables to invite pollinators and predators for better farm production. While speaking on this, he also stressed the wild edibles and leaves have great nutritional values and specific characteristics to be used as bio-pest repellents which are natural and no harm to the local biodiversity. Further, he suggests having more on-farm research and knowledge sharing workshops/conferences by providing opportunities to smallholders for sharing of their learnings and experiences with smallholders of other regions and stakeholders for better empanelment and technological blending of scientific knowledge and traditional wisdom.

Dr. Jusmita, giving her presentation on resilient community and made us think about how our resources are getting extinct. She shared some of her interventions under NERLP. Like cardamom and crop diversification in the water sources and catchment area to ensure recharge of the water source area.

The concluding remarks were made by Rev Dr Sebastian, Director of NEDSSS Guwahati where he outlined the key points of the two days’ workshop. These two days sessions were moderated by Ms Devi Kalyani, Mr Mrinal Gohain, Dr Lukose, Mr Jonas Lakra and Mr Prabal Sen in a very participatory way where almost 10 smallholders and 10 partner directors were shared their best practices and learnings during the session on the impact that has brought through FARM NE program. All the 16 partners and farmers from across the Northeast region set up a small stall showcasing the Agri products produced in their dioceses.