Agroecology
Making farming more resilient – for people, land and livelihoods.
Across the Northern Western Ghats, smallholder farmers face erratic rainfall, declining soil health, limited irrigation and increasingly uncertain farm incomes. Raah works with farmers to build diversified, climate-resilient farming systems that improve soil, use water more efficiently, strengthen nutrition and create more reliable sources of income.
Our approach combines agroecological practices with locally appropriate technology, farmer knowledge, continuous field support and market linkages – helping farms become more productive, resilient and ecologically healthy over time.
The Problem >
Small holders manage fragmented plots where soil depth, fertility, and moisture retention vary sharply across short distances. Rain arrives in high-intensity events, and soil moisture declines quickly once the season shifts. These conditions increase yield variability, raise input inefficiency, and compress margins for families who depend on farming for food and cash.
< Our Solution
Raah builds farming systems around field realities and season timing. Soil testing, crop planning, and plot-level agronomy support guide choices on seed, spacing, nutrition, and water. Farmer Field Schools and Farmer Interest Groups provide multi-season coaching, input access, and market linkages, while farm ponds and efficient drip irrigation expand cropping into winter and summer windows.
Active Projects
From Individual Farms to Resilient Farming Systems.
Raah’s agroecology portfolio tests and scales farming models that bring together soil health, water security, crop diversity, women’s agency and market access.
Our projects demonstrate how smallholder farms can become more productive while also
becoming more resilient to climate and ecological stress.
One-Acre Food Forest
Women-Led Agroecology for Resilient Farms
Supported by the Gates Foundation, Raah’s One-Acre Food Forest (‘1AFF’) model is working with 540 tribal women farmers across 540 acres in Palghar, Maharashtra, transforming individual plots into diverse, productive food forests. Each farmer receives a farm-specific plan combining fruit and timber trees, intercrops, soil-health practices, bio-inputs, water infrastructure and hands-on technical support. The model is designed to generate food, nutrition and income from the same acre, while rebuilding soil, improving water retention and increasing on-farm biodiversity.At its core, 1AFF is about more than changing what is grown. It is about strengthening women’s agency over land, farming decisions and livelihoods, while creating agricultural systems that can remain productive and resilient over the long term.
Capturing Rain Where It Falls - Farm Ponds for Year-Round Farming
As part of the Gates-supported initiative, Raah constructed 191 farm ponds, each measuring 35 x 35 x 6 feet, creating approximately 27.5 million litres of water-storage capacity to support 355 acres of farmland.
These ponds capture and store monsoon rainfall directly on farms, providing water for food forests and diversified crops through longer dry periods. By reducing dependence on distant water sources and costly water transportation, they make year-round farming more viable for tribal farming families.
With regular maintenance and periodic desilting, each pond is designed as a long-term farm asset that strengthens both water security and climate resilience.
Ginger Farming Pilot - Testing New Income Opportunities for Smallholder Farmers
Raah is piloting organic ginger cultivation with 30 smallholder farmers, using 300 kg of carefully selected, high-quality seed rhizomes.
The pilot combines organic soil-health practices, crop management and efficient water use while tracking crop performance under erratic rainfall and rising temperatures. The aim is to understand whether ginger can provide a viable, climate-resilient cash crop for smallholder farmers while maintaining soil health. The pilot is also generating evidence on yields, costs, farmer returns and climate performance to inform decisions about whether and how the model can be scaled.
Discover how our 1AFF project comes to life on the ground
What We Do
Raah strengthens smallholder agriculture through crop diversification, soil health improvement, water-support infrastructure, and season-aligned capacity building. The programme combines bio resource centers, farm ponds and efficient irrigation with soil testing, and tool banks, delivered through Farmer Field Schools and continuous field mentoring.
< Where
Raah’s agroecology work spans 16 clusters across Jawhar, Mokhada and Nashik in Mumbai’s Northern Western Ghats. Farming here is largely rainfed, with limited irrigation, and supports indigenous and smallholder communities whose livelihoods depend on increasingly unpredictable monsoons. Women play a central role in farming and household food security, yet often have limited control over land, resources and decisions. Our interventions therefore focus on the realities of these farms—linking women’s agency, food and nutrition security, water availability, ecological health and farm incomes.
How >
Work begins with plot diagnosis and season planning using soil tests and water budgets. SRI/SMI, orchard-based agroforestry, and mixed cropping run with soil testing, bio-input protocols, drip irrigation, and farm ponds into field practice. A digital backend tracks inputs, yields, and margins, and Producer Groups aggregate volumes and strengthen price discovery. Iterative learning cycles convert field observations into refined protocols, improving repeatability and scalability across villages.
Partners
Problem
Solution
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