Regenagri, an international regenerative agriculture programme, is being extended to tea estates in south India, The Hindu reports from Coimbatore. Between 50 and 60 tea gardens in the country, including 10 in the south, are now part of it.

The programme is run by the UK-based Regenagri Community Interest Company in collaboration with Solidaridad Network Asia, the International Cooperative Alliance and WWF-India. Shatadru Chattopadhyay, managing director of Solidaridad Asia, said it was launched for tea estates in December 2024 with the Indian Tea Association and has now tied up with the United Planters Association of Southern India.

Tea growers face erratic rainfall, poor soil health and rising temperatures. Over a usual three-year period, the programme helps growers move to practices that raise soil organic matter, encourage biodiversity, sequester carbon and improve water and energy management, and the land is certified, with traceability and decarbonisation requirements.

Regenagri is also run for cotton in Maharashtra, where most growers are small-scale on rain-fed land and find it hard to convert to organic farming, Chattopadhyay said. Farmers in the programme saw yields rise 10% to 20%, and are encouraged to form farmer producer organisations to buy inputs in bulk and cut costs.

Talks are under way with international textile brands to buy cotton goods from Regenagri-certified land, and carbon credits received this year from last year's audits have been distributed to farmers as another source of income.

Photo: jisah / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: The Hindu – Agriculture