TRAGEUP – Transform Agriculture Eco-System in Uttar Pradesh
The Department of Agriculture, Government of Uttar Pradesh (GoUP) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have entered a Knowledge Partnership in 2018 for driving Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). The partnership seeks to transform the sector in the selected districts of UP by promoting a Food Systems approach to agriculture through nutrition-focused crop diversification, introducing innovative women-friendly and climate-smart technology and developing market linkages. To enable the transformation, the following three priority projects were identified:
- Nutrition focused and gender-responsive nutrition farm agriculture.
- Diffusion and adoption of women-friendly and climate-smart technology; and
- Linking farmer collectives with markets.
While GoUP is committed to furthering the three priority projects, their implementation is highly complex, contextual, and it is difficult to measure progress. It is hard to clearly identify those most in need, and also requires extensive changes in entrenched behaviours in various stakeholders. The Department, therefore, requested the Foundation to provide technical support in the design, implementation and learnings from these projects so that they can later be made mainstream. Since 2019, the foundation has been providing targeted technical and implementation assistance to GoUP on market development, private sector partnerships, promotion of nutri-cereals, mainstreaming of climate-smart, gender-friendly technology, and strengthening the FPO ecosystem through digital multi-stakeholder platform.