Workshop for farmers: awareness and advocacy for soil health

Training session 

Cholistan Phase I Assessment

CPCCF practical application soil health .mp4

Dr Usman trained under CPCCF in Holistic Land Management and Grazing practices to learn how to revive the soil and land in his family owned Farm. His family disappointed with outcomes form their farming outputs had wanted Usman to go to the cities to become a professor His education had geared him towards Animal Sciences and he obtained his Phd. On joining CPCCF's project he was inspired to implement the strategy to his family farm. reluctantly his father allowed him to use 50 acres of the land. Usman has established a grass fed organic livestock company as well as is retiring his abandoned land to life improving soil and preparing it for further development.

Toady Usman lives on his Farm raising livestock and his young family. He has adapted the savory method of wired paddocks to local method and uses his sheep dogs that he trained to manage the herds from paddock to paddock.

Our second project was: Introducing Regenerative Farming with biochar enriched compost to Smallholder Farmers, partially funded by a Small Grant from UNDP GEF:

Rationale for project :Biochar Enhances Crop Yield, Enriches Soil & Protects Water. ... Nitrogen tends to run-off regular soils, upsetting ecosystem balance in streams and riparian areas. Biochar also holds gasses; recent research has proven biochar-enriched soils reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions by 50-80%.

In 2018, CPCCF completed a year-long workshop in several villages around Bhai Pheru, District Kasur, near Lahore. The workshop was partially funded by UNDP GEF SGP, to spread knowledge about the on-farm production and use of biochar-enriched composts for raising land fertility, and how small farmers can make it themselves from their local wastes, replacing chemical fertilizers to reduce costs and pre-empt land degradation. 

The major outcome of this workshop has been that 1,000 small farmers in the targeted area have attended day-long seminars to see for themselves, how they can make their own soil amendments at their own farms from “agricultural residues,” and how these “soil amendments” can be used to replace chemical fertilizers and pesticides, to both improve their incomes and reverse “land degradation.”

This has resulted in the emergence of a cadre of 40+ small farmers in villages around Bhai Pheru to makes their own biochar-enriched-composts from local wastes. This cadre of farmers also imparts training in the production methodology they have learnt from us, to their neighbours and relatives, making the workshop we have done  a potential origin of a bona fide “movement.”  

Our third project is pending funding and is in collaboration with Cholistan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences(CUVAS) Bahawalpur Pakistan 

In June 2018, CPCCF entered into an MOU with CUVAS to demonstrate how, by combining Holistic Planned Grazing and growing dense, native forests, drylands can rapidly be converted into vast areas of forests-cum-grazing pastures to transform the climate of Pakistan, countering the threat of rapidly approaching “water shortages.” Pakistan is especially vulnerable to water exhaustion as it has the highest proportion of drylands among all large countries in the world with populations exceeding 100 million.

Phase I of the “CUVAS project” will be launched on  100 acres of land that Cholistan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (CUVAS) has allocated to CPCCF. We are trying to raise US$ 250,000 for the CUVAS project, to rapidly bring it to a sustainable stage. Phase II of the project will then create a comprehensive plan for conversion of up to 10 million hectares of Pakistan's Drylands into forests-cum-grazing pastures to transform Pakistan into a successful partner of 4 per 1000 initiative by sequestering carbon in to soil through improving soil health and restoration of drylands into productive carbon sinks

This is a crucially important project, the implementation of which will be a major success in the global efforts to fight climate change and poverty.