Promoting Sustainable Food Consumption in India

1. To enhance sustainable food production and consumption in peri-urban and urban areas 2. To reduce the environmental impacts of urban food consumption by promoting ‘Connected Ecological Farming’ in food producing rural areas 3. To build capacities of urban households on sustainable and healthy food choices 4. To develop a model and methodology that helps assess the footprint of the food production and consumption leading to reduced ecological footprint 5. Share the experiences of the project for long-lasting impacts at the sub-national and national level The project will reach out to 2500 farmers as part of ‘Connected Farming Enterprises’ to adopt sustainable production systems which reduce the ecological foot print in production of food through 10 Producer Knowledge Centres (PKC) in rural areas. It will also reach 200 urban households to produce food in urban areas and adopt food waste recycling practices which helps in reducing the footprint of cities. Capacity building for urban consumers will be done through Food-Info-Marts in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with a target of reaching 50,000 urban consumers during the project period. 1. 1000 farmers have been trained in sustainable production 2. A Food-Information-Mart (FIM) has been opened in K.P.H.B, Hyderabad 3. Training events have been conducted with college students and urban communities on the ecological footprints of food in the city of Hyderabad 4. A new FIM is being opened in the city of Visakhapatnam, AP 5. Households in the city of Hyderabad have been recruited to participate in the impact-assessment 6. Methodology for measuring the ecological debt at the household level is being developed 7. Data collection at the farm-level is underway to collect information on water-use, carbon emissions, nitrogenous emissions, pesticide use, etc. to quantify the ecological footprints of production in the local scenario Expected outcomes of the project: 1. Enhanced sustainable food production and consumption in peri-urban and urban areas: Establish Food-Info-Marts that provide healthy, locally grown food and complement with food from Connected Farming Enterprises (CFEs) along with education and advisory on sustainable food production and consumption in rural, peri-urban, urban areas. 2. Reduced environmental impacts of food production: By establishing Producer Knowledge Centres (PKCs) at strategic locations support the farming community to understand the environmental impacts of food production, adopt sustainable production systems, establish nutrient recycling plants to recycle nutrients from the food waste and use the same for food production within and beyond project boundaries. 3. Improve knowledge on ecological impact of production and consumption to different stakeholders through decision support system: Project aims at developing a methodology to quantify the ecological impacts of food production and consumption patterns and develop resources for better decision making. The DSS consists of two components. • Online resource on ecological footprints of food: This provides useful information on footprints of food for educating the consumers, producers and other stakeholders engaged in food production, supply and consumption. • Ecological debt index: Multiple social, environmental and climate indicators, coordinated with SDG indicators, developed as an index to monitor the benefits of project interventions. The concept is briefly detailed as follows: The GHG mitigation benefits will be measured on a life-cycle basis starting from the production of the food to the consumption at the consumer level. This is achieved by establishing what is called an Ecological Debt Index (EDI) that combines GHG mitigation benefits, resilience benefits and other environmental benefits in terms of water miles, food miles, and carbon footprint that will be assessed and combined into an easy to understand index. The data for the EDI will be collected by direct measurements from the panel data established under the project, sample surveys among the respondents, participatory exercises and published government records. The GHG emissions reductions will be calculated by comparing the emissions under the project with the baseline emissions using the standard methodologies prescribed by IPCC including the emission factor databases. Residents of Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam can support sustainable production by purchasing directly from farmers who have adopted eco-friendly production practices. Volunteers are welcome to reach out to communities, schools and colleges to promote knowledge on the environmental impacts of food production in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) Interested parties may also reach out to CSA to find out more on other ways to get involved