Agriculture continues to be central to the lives and economies of rural communities in India. Many of those communities have little or no access to modern energy services. These realities motivated the holding of the workshop “Energy and agriculture for smart villages in India” in September 2016 at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Patancheru, Telangana, India. The workshop was organised jointly by ICRISAT and the Smart Villages Initiative. Its aim was to examine the role of sustainable energy services in enabling rural communities in India to realise the full potential of the agricultural value chain.
This brief summarises the key findings and recommendations of the workshop for policymakers, development organisations and other stakeholders.
