Projects

KPS is supporting C&A Foundation’s sustainable cotton program by developing an institutional structure for a community-managed financing mechanism that is making drip irrigation technology affordable for small and marginal cotton farmers of Gujarat. This involves, conducting a risk analysis of the fund management model/s and further suggesting low risk and sustainable options for the management of the fund in future.
Furthermore, KPS is currently engaged in developing training contents for Techno Serve, India in three components, namely (a) Conservation Agriculture, (b) Business basics of farming, (c) Hygiene and safety at farm level to help make its barley supply chain sustainable in Northern India.

KPS was also recently engaged with Syngenta Foundation, India for a value-chain research study on “Understanding Agricultural production and market in semi-arid regions of south Rajasthan, north-western Madhya Pradesh, and north-eastern Gujarat”. The main objective of the project was to replace some of the existing varieties of maize, which are supposed to be low yielding, with high yielding and drought-tolerant, “AAA” varieties. While analysing the time series data on production of maize, area under maize, and yield under maize for all the districts of the three states, potential districts were identified with at least 10,000 hectares of land under maize. By comparing the data about rainfall and poverty rankings derived from SECC data, 32 districts were identified as potential areas for conducting the primary survey. Primary survey was conducted in 6 districts of the 3 states and by analysing various parameters on socio-economic indicators, use of hybrid seeds, potential by consultation of various stakeholders, an approximate demand for the three cross hybrid maize was estimated.

The other assignment, KPS has undertaken was a “Mapping the adoption of improved varieties of major crops and management practices in Gujarat” in Gujarat for The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the foremost crops in a particular state (in 13 districts), collating the information about production, yield, and the nuances. KPS has used a team of 18 versatile and trained enumerators and supervisors to collect data of 1560 Household survey and 234 Key informants and Seed Dealer interviews. We have used ODK Collect (CAPI) tool for the survey and produced a high level data quality to the client.