One Acre food forest (1AFF)
Raah Foundation’s Women-led One Acre Forest Food Program (1AFF) is an agroecology-first, women-centered model designed for the Western Ghats—an ecologically critical landscape that supports agriculture and water systems for hundreds of millions of people and holds globally significant biodiversity.
The program responds to accelerating degradation and a “paradox of plenty,” where heavy monsoon rainfall can still translate into acute summer water scarcity. In this context, rainfed monocropping, soil erosion on slopes, weak market access, and nutrition insecurity can create a reinforcing cycle of low resilience and low income—especially for women, who often do much of the farm labor without equivalent control over resources or decisions.
At the core of 1AFF is a practical transformation: one acre on a woman farmer’s land becomes a diversified “food forest” that produces food and income while restoring soil, water, and biodiversity.
The acre is designed as a layered, intercropped system integrating fruit trees, vegetables, millets, timber species, medicinal plants, nitrogen-fixing crops, and native grasses so harvests are spread across seasons and risk is reduced. Because farms span flat land to steep slopes, the approach uses contour-based layout and upland–midland–lowland zoning to curb erosion, improve infiltration, and strengthen water retention. To link regeneration with household wellbeing, 1AFF also includes a “Nutrition Patch” (about 10% of the acre) to improve dietary diversity and address malnutrition and anaemia.
Starter System
A standardized land prep of slope aware contour design + diverse crop-tree mix + nutrition patch
Gender Lens
To make nutrition and finances easily accessible to women through climate change
Ecological Restoration
To make nutrition and finances easily accessible to women through climate change
Implementation is women-led, skill-based, and locally supported. 1AFF builds women’s prosperity through stronger decision-making power, technical knowledge, financial literacy, leadership, collective power, and pathways for value addition and better markets. Delivery is reinforced through local women cadres (such as Krishi Sakhi and aligned nutrition facilitators) who provide field guidance, monitoring, and household nutrition advisory—turning training into consistent practice. The program also strengthens women’s institutions to scale gains: Self-Help Groups link into Farmers’ Interest Groups and district federations that can aggregate inputs, enable processing/packaging, and negotiate market linkages. Technology supports quality and learning through tools like soil probes/sensors, mobile-based monitoring, satellite/drone observation, weather and microclimate devices, and solar drying/processing for value addition.
1AFF is built to scale through partnerships and proof: Raah Foundation anchors design, delivery, and monitoring, while philanthropic, research, government, and market partners help expand reach and adoption. Measurement spans empowerment, ecology, and nutrition, using baseline–endline surveys, participatory assessment, and lightweight digital tracking to make outcomes visible and improve implementation over time.
