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Cultivating Change: Advancing leadership, strengthening organisations, and promoting agroecology for migrant sugarcane workers
Project period: January 2025 - December 2027
Donor: Association for India's Development (AID)
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Prakash Ransing, Pallavi Harshe and Aarti Bankar
Aim and Objectives
The project seeks to strengthen women farmers' organisations in Western Maharashtra and Nandurbar by enhancing their recognition, collective voice, and access to entitlements. It also aims to address distress migration among sugarcane workers by promoting and scaling self-reliant, agroecological farming models that challenge the dominant chemical-intensive agrarian paradigm.
Key Activities
In Nandurbar district village level meetings with women are being conducted. Some of the key issues emerging from these meetings include: include labour insecurity, seasonal migration, lack of ration cards, and the absence of basic identity documents.
A pilot kitchen garden programme is also being implemented in Nandurbar with five women from Scheduled Tribe communities, who are primarily involved in agriculture labour as well as seasonal migration. The aim is to assess local challenges, feasibility, and specific needs.
In Beed and Hingoli districts, ecologically sound self-reliant farming (ESSRF) model is being implemented with select sugarcane workers. Prior to this, as a preparatory step, a kitchen garden programme has been initiated with 60 women sugarcane workers to begin dialogue and gain insights into the challenges of transitioning to agroecological practices. A process documentation of the programme is ongoing.
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Exploring alternative livelihoods for women sugarcane workers
Project Period: 1st November 2025 to 31st October 2027
Donor: American Jewish World Service (AJWS)
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Pallavi Harshe and Aarti Bankar
Aim and Objectives
The project seeks to Explore possibilities of alternative livelihood options for sugarcane workers which would gradually help, stop distress migration. The programme will be implemented in Beed and Hingoli district specifically focusing on young sugarcane workers (between age group 16 to 30) from both land owning and landless households.
Key Activities
The programme is being implemented in four villages from Beed and two villages from Hingoli district. Prior to this, as a preparatory step, a kitchen garden programme has been initiated with 60 women sugarcane workers. This initiative aims to initiate dialogue and gain insights into the challenges of transitioning to agro-ecological practices.
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Ecologically Sound Self Reliant Farming (ESSRF) programme
Donors: American Jewish World Services (AJWS), Bharat Agroecology Fund, People for Progress in India
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Swati Satpute, Sneha Bhat
Objective and Scope
The Agroecology Programme, initiated by SOPPECOM, addresses the intersecting challenges of women farmers' disempowerment and environmental degradation caused by chemical-intensive agriculture. Launched in 2021 as a pandemic relief initiative for women farmers from drought-prone and suicide-affected regions of Marathwada and Vidarbha, the ongoing programme has since evolved into a comprehensive effort to promote ecologically sound, self-reliant farming. It encourages biodiversity, food and nutrition security, and foregrounds women's local knowledge as central to sustainable agriculture.
In 2026, the programme is working with 236 women across 30 villages in five districts, deepening its focus on self-reliance and collective action.
Key Activities
Direct support to women farmers: the programme provides direct support in terms of seeds and manure. Over the years, support has been redesigned to strengthen ownership and sustainability. In 2025-26 agriculture year, more than half the cost for manure is being borne by women, and they are gradually beginning to the preserve their own seeds. Inputs like drudgery reducing tools, and solar fencing were also introduced with small number of women farmers.
Training and capacity building: Trainings with representative women farmers are organised every year at Chetana Vikas, covering soil and water management, mixed cropping, seed preservation and pest management. Since 2023 a special focus has been given to capacity building of champion women farmers. Various workshops, events, and exposure visits have been organised over the years that provide women farmers opportunities for sharing and joint learning.
Outcomes and Outputs
Women farmers have formed the Paryavaransnehi Swavlambi Shetkari Mahila Sanghatan, strengthening collective identity, leadership, and access to schemes. Champion women now mentor others, expand agroecological plots, reduce chemical inputs, preserve seeds, and challenge patriarchal and caste hierarchies. Food security and crop diversity have increased on average, 25 types of produce per woman alongside improved soil health.
This programme will be scaled up as a climate resilient model in the villages where it is being implemented.
Key outputs include Pushkala (Plentiful)a booklet of 12 case stories and the documentary One Seed at a Time, and five other short videos used widely for advocacy and outreach. All the outputs could be found on SOPPECOM website and YouTube channel.
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Agro-ecology for sustainable and just groundwater governance (Short title: Careful irrigation)
Project duration 2023 - 2027
Donor: IHE Delft
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Sneha Bhat, Swati Satpute
Aim and Objectives
This multi-country project brings together partners working on agroecology and groundwater, based on the premise that sustainable water use in agriculture requires a shift away from water-intensive crops and farming systems. Regenerative approaches such as agroecology offer strong potential, as they are inherently less water demanding. The project aims to rethink and rework irrigation practices to align with regenerative farming systems, an approach described as care-ful irrigation.
The objective is to identify, document, and learn from on-ground farming experiments that integrate agroecology and water sustainability. These experiences will form the basis for long-term, practice-based processes of co-learning, experimentation, and collective engagement across regions.
Key Activities
The project complements the ESSRF programme through focused research and learning activities. This includes in-depth monitoring of ESSRF practices of 30 women farmers, who maintain monthly diaries documenting inputs, soil health, pest management, costs, and produce.
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Mozilla Foundation Fellowship Programme
Donor: Mozilla Foundation
Team members: Seema Kulkarni, Sneha Bhat, Pallavi Harshe, Prakash Ransing, Swati Satpute
Objective of the Project
SOPPECOM has been selected as one of the host organisations for the Mozilla Foundation Tech + Society Fellowship. Host organisations are paired with a Fellow who will work with the organisation for a specific proposed output. As part of the Fellowship programme, SOPPECOM is working with Ms. Priya Goswami, a feminist tech and media maker.
Activities
As part of the project a website to share stories of women farmers is being developed. The website would be launched in 2026.
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Soft Systems Analysis: Streamlining participatory approaches and agent-based models to explore ideas of fairness at the food-water-biodiversity (FWB) nexus (fairSTREAM)
There are conflicting views on what are fair outcomes, and this has complicated the process of finding viable solutions for many policy issues at the food-water-biodiversity (FWB) nexus. Improving our ability to understand and reconcile these claims about what is fair is critical for managing risks in this complex and rapidly changing nexus system. This is a significant challenge that requires the integration of multiple sources of knowledge and the cooperation of many different societal actors. Science can support this endeavour by developing fair procedures that promote fair outcomes. Doing so effectively requires: 1) co-producing this knowledge with stakeholders to articulate divergent views on challenges and opportunities and 2) a robust analysis of how the effects of decisions propagate through the FWB system.
fairSTREAM project takes a bottom-up approach to knowledge co-production. It looks at the ability of large-scale agent-based models (ABMs), dynamically coupled to hydrological and biodiversity models, to simulate the distributive effects of decisions through the system with respect to trade-offs, burdens, and benefits for individual farmers and other stakeholders. This co-production process will be undertaken in a sub-section of Upper Bhima basin in India as a case study.
The project will produce an expanded toolkit on systems-based and fair co-production processes, to be published as a working paper or handbook. Based on the stakeholder-driven assessments we will develop quantitative scenarios using a modelling approach. Through this we can represent stakeholder heterogeneity, synergies, and trade-offs at the individual level.
Project Period: April 2022- September 2024
Funded by: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg
Collaborators: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg & Indian Institute for Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune
https://iiasa.ac.at/projects/fairstream
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Agroecology programme
This programme provides support to women farmers to make a shift towards svavalmbi sheti (self-reliant agriculture). As part of this programme around 150 women farmers across six districts have made a shift towards chemical free, mixed crops cultivation. Now in its third year, a special focus is given for the capacity building of champion women farmers who would take this initiative further in their villages. Research and documenation is also in important component of this programme. Currently the programme is supported through three projects: Women Farmers show the Way! Consolidating the agro-ecological model in five districts of Maharashtra (Supported by Agro Ecology Fund) Agro-ecology programme in Yavatmal district with women Farmers (Supported by People for Progress in India (PPI)), Women farmers lead the way: pathways for climate resilient farming (Supported by American Jewish World Service (AJWS))
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Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate change:
This is an integrated project in collaboration with Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Forum is playing a key role in advocacy and outreach through capacity building workshops in the North-east India to create awareness about effect of climate change due to development of small hydropower projects in Eastern Himalayas and thereby influence policy and action.
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Alternative discourse around inter-state conflicts in the Mahanadi basin
Soppecom under its larger network Forum for policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India has taken up one year project to develop an alternative approach in terms of framework and processes around the ongoing interstate conflict of the Mahanadi basin. The framework is by the normative concerns of equity, sustainability and participation and keeping water security of all and integrity of the riverine ecosystem as the overarching goal. The one year study is supported by Global Greengrants Fund.
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Engaging with the Kerala floods
The state of Kerala experienced floods in 2018 and Kerala Resource Centre of the Water Conflict Forum is doing a one year study on mapping the floods in the Chalakudy basin, understanding the reasons and effects of these floods through interactions with the flood affected persons. The learnings from this study will be used to prepare an integrated river rejuvenation and river basin management plan for the basin. The study is supported by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies.
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Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan
SOPPECOM did a rapid assessment of the water and soil conservation work implemented in villages under the Maharashtra Government flagship program Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan to make Maharashtra state drought free by 2019. The study report is being finalized.
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Note:
Apart from the assignments and consultancies mentioned above,
some of the core team members of SOPPECOM have also taken
up individual consultancy assignment with different agencies. |
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