Fairtrade NAPP had conducted a Training of Trainers (ToT) programme at Indian Institute of Spices Research (IISR), Kozhikode, Kerala in India in June for the SPOs based on the need assessment programme. The program focused on latest trends in crop production and processing of major spices.
IISR which is a constituent of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), is major institute for the researches on Spices in India. The programme was the result of a requirement put forward by various farmer groups from various geographical proximities. The farmers were in need of understanding the different emerging practices, pre-harvest and post-harvest technologies to increase their quality and productivity of the products, value addition of the spices. In the current scenario of agriculture, there are lots of challenges faced by the farmers due to various reasons. Hence, the different kinds of training programme are required to be provided to various levels of the farmers. This workshop, in specific, was focussed on latest emerging advancements in crop production and processing of major spices.
The Training of Trainers (ToT) programme was organized to create a group of trainers who would gain knowledge from the experts and then conduct training activities for the farmer groups. The participants were from various SPOs of Idukki and Wayanad in Kerala, South India. The training programme also included field level visits to poly houses, exposure to drip irrigation methods, farm visits to understand various plant species under the spices and also to the value addition processing units in the IISR campus.
The participants obtained adequate knowledge of the new high yielding and disease resistant varieties of various spices and the same shall be shared to different farmer communities within the system. This is an initial training programme for the SPOs and the same shall be repeated at various levels for different SPOs under the Fairtrade certification. The training programme helps us to create more qualified trainers within the Fairtrade system to provide effective training to all levels of farmer communities within a short time and in an economically feasible way. Farmers also got an opportunity to understand various technologies of farming methodologies and to go for value addition of their raw materials to enhance their livelihood options.
