Our first pilot project in India

Dear tree friends,

In this blog post, we’re excited to introduce to you our first pilot tree-planting project. This project is taking place in northern India in the municipal corporation of Abohar and other neighboring villages in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Punjab. The latest IPCC report shows that India needs to make drastic changes including carbon emission reductions to reduce the climate catastrophe. Consequently, our team at GROW MY TREE saw this as an opportunity to expand our roots there. 

India is an agrarian country with around 70% of its people depending directly or indirectly upon agriculture* and around 41.49% of total labor are associated with agriculture in the year 2020**. There tends to be a lack of financial infrastructure for farmers that are also part of small families with little buying power. Thus we are working towards subsidizing these farmers and achieving tangible socio-economic growth. 

Abohar is known for its citrus production, accounting for around 60% of the state’s total produce***. Therefore, the seedlings that are being planted for this project predominantly include orchards of fruit crops such as citrus, plum and pomegranate. Other robust local flora like khejri (Prosopis cineraria) are included as they thrive despite the arid climate. It boasts nitrogen-fixing and fertility enhancing ability and can survive with little intervention. One of the goals of the pilot-project is to provide a wide variety of plants and trees to ensure mixed forestry and biodiversity. 

The first aim that this project strives to achieve is to improve the socio-economic livelihood of local farmers and to diversify their income stream. Moreover, we use the farmers’ own self-interest to ensure the survival of the trees. They plant the trees on their land and are trained to integrate the agroforestry approach into their current way of farming. The project therefore also aims to educate the farmers on agroforestry and to establish a strong link between farmers and academic researchers. The India project also encourages to increase forest cover and biodiversity. Lastly, the launch of this project will add to our goal to mitigate and decrease the process of climate change. 

Because of the amount of trees planted in our first year of operations thanks to you, we’re able to invest in such pilot projects. We look forward to taking you along with us on our journey and sharing more insights, photos and videos on our social media channels. So much has already been achieved - but there is still so much more to do!

From trees with love,

Your GROW MY TREE team

Sources: *Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, **Trading Economics, ***Hindustan Times