This Plan Vivo-certified Acorn project, run by our partner Intellecap with ground support from Transform Rural India (TRI) in India, is currently supporting over 45,000 smallholder farmers across Jharkhand.
In Jharkhand, a state in eastern India, high rural poverty, food insecurity, and malnourishment are unfortunately common. Literacy rates are low, and climate change presents an enormous challenge to smallholder farmers who have traditionally relied on monoculture: increased temperatures, reduced water availability, and low productivity all contribute to more than 10% of Jharkhand’s households facing seasonal food insecurity.
Intellecap, a part of the Aavishkaar Group, is a pioneer in building enabling ecosystems and channeling capital to create and nurture a sustainable & equitable society. Founded in 2002, Intellecap works across critical sectors like Agriculture, Livelihoods, Climate Change, Clean Energy, Financial Services, Gender & Inclusion, Healthcare, Water and Sanitation, and has delivered over 500 global engagements across 40+ countries and syndicated investments of over $500 Million USD in Capital. Through its network of grassroot partners, like TRI, Intellecap implements agroforestry projects in Jharkhand and West Bengal state of India.
TRI is a non-profit organization that aims to help improve rural livelihoods, education and healthcare. TRI is working with farmers with tree-based cropping systems including agroforestry with fruit trees as main crops in 4 states of India. With the Acorn project, they hold the important role of farmer mobilization, organizing data collection, trainings, assuring implementation of agroforestry model on ground and monitoring and verification of the activities undertaken by the farmers. TRI is also engaged with Government of India’s Rural Development Department (RDD) to promote horticulture and agro forestry at large scale through the 96 MGNREGA program. With the technical and strategic support provided by TRI MGNREGA Planning cell RDD has already implemented high density fruit plantation in about 30,000 hectares across Jharkhand State.
Together with Intellecap and TRI, Acorn aims to empower smallholder farmers to adopt agroforestry. Increasing their income from products such as mango, guava, and lime as well through carbon credits, making the existing land more productive after it was left fallow due to lack of resources and adverse climatic conditions, and overcoming malnourishment of the tribal population due to non-diversified and mostly carbohydrate-based diets.
The project aims to greatly increase the income status of farmer households by 100-150% from their existing income, mainly through the income realization from sale of the tree fruit and the realization of the carbon credit sale proceeds.
The project has already undertaken the following activities:
