The sixth edition of the India Land and Development Conference (ILDC) took place at Bangaluru, Karnataka from 7-9 December 2022 to provide a platform for enriching and interdisciplinary conversation among representatives of the social sector organisations working on land and development, academia, and the government.

ILDC promotes inter-sectoral, inter-disciplinary and multi-level conversations on land and development issues. ILDC helps researchers, practitioners, governments, businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals working around and at the interface of land in geographies, across scales, and around issues to come together, connect, and interact at an open and inclusive platform. It also triggers new intra and inter-sectoral and disciplinary conversations and partnerships around the land.

Caritas India is working with smallholder farmers in building resilience to climate change and food security. Caritas India presented the smallholder farmer resilience model of Caritas India including SAFBIN, a regional program, working with small farmers especially women in four South Asian countries to promote land tenure security, agroecological practices, collectivization, farmer-led research, and partnerships to ensure food and nutritional security, farm income enhancement and resilience.

Mr. Prabal Sen from Caritas India presented the highlights of Caritas India’s engagement in the context of the Climate Resilient Food System & Land Tenure Security of Small Farmers in South Asia. A brief presentation was shared focusing on a rapid survey conducted to assess the impact of COVID-19 on smallholder farmers. He shared about the land tenancy pattern and the localized solutions like community seed banks, agroecological practices, Smallholder Farmers Collective, District Farmers Forum, and District Legal Committee adopted by the farmers to cope with the emerging situations.

Ms. Patricia Mukhim, a well-known writer, journalist, and editor of the Shillong Times expressed her interest to know more about INM, IPM, and the seed system. She also inquired whether Caritas India works for the nutrition aspect of mothers and children in Northeast India.

Dr. Vincent T. Darlong, Vice-Chancellor of Martin Luther Christian University also expressed his concern about the low engagement of young people in the farming system.

Mr. Prabal acknowledged the emerging realities in the agricultural sector and suggested incentivising agriculture to attract the young generation. Agriculture needs to be promoted as a lucrative livelihood to bring more people into the sector.

Dr. M. Prabhakar, Principal Investigator, NICRA, ICAR raised a point for the sustainability of the programmes. Sharing the global perspective, the move should be from Climate-resilience to climate-neutral and start calculating carbon credit. He suggested having linkages with ongoing schemes for the capacity building of the community.

The sharing was fruitful to gain insights and perspectives from the different stakeholders. It helped in building intra and inter-sectoral and disciplinary conversations and partnerships with academia, researchers, journalists and govt representatives.