Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

FMC’s ‘Samarth’ promotes water stewardship and sustainable agriculture

July 21, 2021
FMC

FMC India is supporting farmers towards a better and more prosperous life through its community outreach program Project Samarth. The company is committed to promoting four key issues: safe water and good health, good agricultural practices, science in agriculture and empowering women in agriculture. Various farmer-focused projects are either running or are under initiation as pillars of Project Samarth. For example, the safe water initiative under Project Samarth directly supports the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of providing “universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030”. Through this initiative, FMC India hopes to make safe and potable drinking water accessible to 200,000 farming families in India within the next three years.

Under the safe water initiative, the company installed 15 water filtration plants in 2019. The dispensing units were installed for each family for safe water allocation easily with a swipe card that releases 20 litres of water. The plants are managed by the village community on a cooperative basis with local FMC staff supporting and guiding the local communities in running the management of the plants.

In the year 2020, the company installed 52 water purification units in sugarcane co-operative societies in Uttar Pradesh that featured purification, cooler and storage facilities. The units have a purification capacity of 40 litres per hour. This resulted in farmers and visitors coming to the sugar co-ops having access to pure and cold water all through the year. This was further enhanced with the installation of 27 new community water purification units in March 2021. Today, 120 villages, 80,000 farmer families in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are expected to reap benefits from this initiative. FMC is expanding the scope of the project to include five more states across India and will be commissioning up to 35 community water filtration units in the chosen states in 2021. A similar number of such plants are scheduled for 2022 as well.

Apart from the Safe Water Initiative, FMC, which is among the leading crop protection companies supporting farmers with innovative technologies developed through localized research and development efforts. FMC partnered with DCM Shriram Group in a pilot project for sugarcane farmers last year, focusing on safe water, good agricultural practices, judicious use of crop protection products and rural development. Around 3 million farmers have been reached through numerous awareness and training camps on good agricultural practices during the year 2020.


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