Prana

PRANA (Promoting Regenerative And No-burn Agriculture) is an ambitious project for lowering emissions by reducing crop residue burning. PRANA is a four-year project by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), focused on the state of Punjab in Northwest India that aims at reaching out to 250,000 farmers for the successful adoption of no-burn cropping systems, eliminating burning of crop residue in one million hectares of crop land, preventing at least six million tonnes of CO2e from entering the atmosphere and saving 500 billion litres of water from enhanced soil health and agronomy.

PRANA will cluster its efforts and activities in five key focus areas:

Build farmers’ knowledge and capacities in crop residue management solutions.

Lower risk perception and increase motivation to try no-burn crop residue management solutions.

Improve equitable access to no-burn crop residue management solutions.

Seek additional long-term income streams for farmers based on environmental contributions.

Policy engagement for conducive policies and an enabling environment.

PRANA is technology agnostic. Nonetheless, given available evidence that the use of the Happy Seeder lowers energy and water consumed while at the same time improves soil health, during the first year PRANA will pay particular attention to promoting this technology. In parallel, PRANA will hold technology demonstration trials involving this and other technologies such as the Super Seeder, PUSA Decomposer and others to assess these solutions as part of the PRANA portfolio.

Often small and marginal farmers are reluctant to use a CRM machine as they find purchasing these machines an expensive option and face difficulties in renting them. PRANA seeks to address these constraints by supporting service providers to create a viable business model of renting out CRM machines as a livelihood option.

PRANA aims to cultivate an environment that reduces instances of stubble burning in Punjab. Partnering with government institutions, PRANA will support the government’s increased willingness for crop transition and will apply nature-based solutions to ecosystem impact.

Although stubble burning is a very common practice that has been prevalent for generations in Northwest Indian agriculture, now is the time for change so that more and more farmers can gain confidence in new crop residue management solutions