Synthesis Report: The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Agriculture and Food Application in Assam

The TEEBAgriFood application in India began in 2019 with the aim to assess organic farming and agroforestry, initially in the Ganga Basin region of India covering two states - Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, and later expanded to Assam in the last year of the project. [...] ensuring that the project is pro-poor and recognizes the gender dimension of the change evaluated) can be well captured in Assam, the endorsement for the extension of the project to Assam was received in March 2023 from the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. [...] The BAU scenario reflects the current policies at the national and sub- national levels, while the optimistic and pessimistic scenarios account for positive and negative policy changes and their expected impacts on the expansion of organic farming and agroforestry. [...] The assessment of organic farming and agroforestry are summarized below followed by the assessment of four capitals: Organic farming: The trend assessments indicate that Assam can witness an increase in the organic cultivated area to gross cropped area from a minimum of 0.97 percent under the pessimistic scenario to 4.94 percent under BaU to the highest 20 percent under the optimistic scenario by. [...] Key takeaways from the study The state-level study provides a broad overview of the status and challenges in assessing the elements concerning organic farming and agroforestry, revealing the potential for upscaling organic farming to nearly 35.71 percent of the gross cropped area (GCA).