The summit brought together experts and practitioners to explore partnerships, programmes, and practical technologies for enhancing climate resilience in the agricultural sector.
Arya.ag, India’s largest integrated grain commerce platform, in strategic partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, successfully hosted the second edition of the Rith Summit on 3rd October 2024 at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.
Rith Summit 2.0: Building Climate Resilience Together brought together leading agribusinesses, technology providers, international experts, and development institutions to explore partnerships, programmes, and practical technologies that can enhance climate resilience within the agricultural sector. The summit provided a platform for experts to connect, share knowledge, and discover innovative solutions to help secure a sustainable future for farming communities.
The summit featured three insightful panel discussions, covering topics such as bridging corporate objectives with practical realities, key learnings from early adopters of sustainable practices, and maximising impact through technical assistance. The panels were moderated by esteemed industry leaders and featured panellists from renowned organisations, including Khedut, Bayer, Olam, LD, BMGF, IDH, UNDP India, Rainmatter Foundation, IFC, Omnivore, responsAbility, Rabo Foundation, and Tata Trusts.
The summit commenced with a welcome note from Anand Chandra, Arya.ag’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, who emphasised the importance of a market-led model that benefits every stakeholder to make agriculture climate-resilient.
Chattanathan Devarajan, Co-Founder of Arya.ag, shared the significant progress made on the actionable points from Rith 1.0, including establishing Public-Private Partnerships to reduce food loss, fostering multi-stakeholder collaborations for climate action, and developing a digital platform for sustainable sourcing. “In the backdrop of Rith 1.0, we enabled Public-Private Partnership (PPP) models in collaboration with the state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Assam to contribute to climate action. These initiatives have reduced food loss by 7%, enabled the conservation of 12 million litres of water, and saved 48,000 kgs of fertilisers,” he shared.
Siddharth Chaturvedi from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation highlighted Arya’s proactive approach to action, stating, “Reflection and action are crucial, and gatherings like Rith are essential. Adaptation is constant and applies universally, especially in the context of climate change—it is at the core of Arya’s ethos. The language of adaptation must shift from beneficiaries to encompass business people who are both producers and consumers.”
Raman Wadhwa, Director of DAY-NRLM at the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, emphasised the importance of collaboration in driving climate action. “Collaboration is key to making our efforts more climate-resilient. No one can tackle this alone; we need multi stakeholder partnerships to drive climate action. The climate crisis is an urgent threat, and the economic cost will be enormous if we don’t act. However, we can turn this challenge into an opportunity,” he said.
Sangeeta Dawar from Bayer Crop Science stressed the need for substantial funding to drive large-scale market transformation. Subhadeep Sanyal from Omnivore highlighted the urgency of implementing new solutions in the
