Established in the year 2000 under the aegis of the Societies Registration Act, 1860, the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) stands as a distinguished non-governmental institution, instrumental in advancing India’s agrarian renaissance and rural rejuvenation.
CARD’s raison d’être is rooted in its unwavering commitment to penetrate every echelon of rural society, with particular emphasis on the agricultural constituency. The organization ardently engages in initiatives designed to ameliorate the socioeconomic condition of the rural populace by deliberating on intricate technical, economic, and policy paradigms that influence agronomic development and rural livelihoods.
Operating with a pan-Indian footprint, CARD undertakes a diverse gamut of interventions across agriculture, horticulture, and rural development. The organization prioritizes the propagation of knowledge, human capital augmentation, and the dissemination of advanced technologies. These objectives are operationalized through a dynamic assemblage of activities encompassing thematic seminars, high-level policy conclaves, capacity enhancement workshops for farmers, agro-industrial exhibitions, empirical surveys, and longitudinal developmental projects, including village adoption for sustainable progress.
CARD meticulously monitors macro and micro trends within the agrarian and agribusiness landscapes, furnishing strategic counsel to both Central and State Governments, civil society entities, and institutional actors. These recommendations are rooted in data-driven analysis and contextual field realities, thereby enabling the formulation of nuanced policy responses and catalytic rural interventions.
Over time, CARD has cultivated a formidable network encompassing cultivators, agri-entrepreneurs, bureaucratic stakeholders, and policy architects. This was achieved through unrelenting advocacy, inclusive dialogue, and proactive coalition-building around agrarian imperatives. The organization has spearheaded seminal movements such as the mainstreaming of public-private partnerships (PPP) in agriculture, lobbying for fiscal de-escalation of agri-credit, leveraging mass media for rural outreach, and orchestrating conclaves with parliamentarians to intensify public investment in agriculture.
CARD’s legacy is intrinsically intertwined with its longstanding symbiosis with farming communities and development institutions nationwide. It has orchestrated innumerable rural expositions, capacity-building symposiums, and pilot field endeavors aimed at agrarian transformation. Through a constellation of meticulously curated programs, CARD empowers cultivators by facilitating access to avant-garde technology, premium agri-inputs, and institutional linkages.
To date, CARD has substantively impacted over 300,000 farmers, implementing district- and block-level awareness interventions with demonstrable efficacy. Its operational imprimatur spans 74 districts across diverse Indian states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and the North-Eastern frontier.