Landscapes Soil Fertility and Water Management

The Landscapes, Soil Fertility, and Water Management (LSFWM) Cluster at ICRISAT's mission is to improve the food and nutritional security of vulnerable households and promote sustainable farm and landscape management practices, innovations, and tools in the semi-arid regions of Asia and Africa.

The LSFWM cluster focuses on enhancing agro-food productivity and implementing farm and landscape-scale natural resource management strategies. We aim to address the farm and landscape challenges faced by smallholder farmers and communities in semi-arid regions through innovative and sustainable approaches.

Approaches:

Our cluster adopts three stages for the development, implementation and scaling of farm and landscape management strategies. Firstly, diagnosis and context analysis to understand the context and build on the priorities and needs of communities. Secondly, we employ a co-design approach to engage communities and stakeholders in participatory planning, testing and implementation of integrated farm and watershed management practices and innovations. Thirdly, we establish learning landscapes as living labs for testing, demonstration, validation and scaling involving stakeholders from local to policy level. We promote the use of innovative agricultural practices at the farm and landscape levels, aiming to enhance sustainability and resilience.

Building Partnerships:

We recognize the importance of partnerships in achieving our goals. We collaborate with state and national governments, NGOs, the donor community, National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES), national agricultural research institutes, farmer organizations, and the private sector. By working together, we can leverage collective knowledge and resources to implement effective solutions.

The cluster focuses on five key areas

 Integrated Landscape Systems: The cluster research and development areas are driven from complexities, multisectoral needs, and multifunctional nature of the landscapes and emerging issues like resource conflicts and climate shocks. We promote integrated practices, agroecological approaches, and systemic solutions and tools at farm to landscape scale and foster community innovations and policy dialogues.

 Integrated soil fertility management and soil health: The cluster research focuses on the testing and promotion of integrated soil fertility practices, nutrient use efficient practices like micro-dosing, fertilizer optimization, soil acidity and salinity reclamation and management, and ecological nutrient management practices.

 Carbon monitoring: We assess the status and level of organic carbon of land use and farming systems and cropping systems, identify agricultural practices that contribute to carbon sequestration, and develop monitoring techniques.

 Agricultural water management: The cluster promotes farm and scheme level water management practices and tools for increased efficiency of water uses and water productivity.

 State of art soil labs: We provide state of art soil testing services and promote the services using digital applications and mobile soil testing labs.