# MRV Foundation

MRV Foundation is a project that spun out of a founder's circle at ReFiDAO. When it comes to safeguarding our food supply and health of our planet from effects of climate change and environmental degradation, effective measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) are key. Whether it's soil regeneration, crops' health improvement and biodiversity enhancement, MRV is critical to help small scale farmers and growers navigate tough challenges of climate change.

To help small scale projects get full benefits of carbon, ecocredits and other incentives for ecosystem services, we've pulled together an MRV Research Group working to publish MRV1O1, a guide to quickly understand and implement relevant MRV best practices.


## The Problem

Traditional MRV approaches are prohibitively expensive, often constituting 30-40% of the costs for large projects over 500 hectares. What’s worse, these expenses are always upfront before generating revenue from the project. Additionally, the MRV methodologies are difficult to understand and often do not include regenerative practices valued by local communities. Data gathered during traditional MRV practices is usually kept in silos and has no useful application or benefits for smaller farmers.

Small farmers produce most of the world’s food supply and they don't have any solutions to turn to Regenerative Practices. This scenario offers us a significant opportunity for regenerative impact. Additionally, Small farmers need support in switching to regenerative practices to protect their farms and livelihood from the effects of climate change.

## Our Solution

We will research and document an MRV best practices guide for small projects based entirely on pilot projects selected, to conduct MRV receive financial incentives for their ecosystem services. In the guide's first edition, we are starting with agriculture, agroforestry, and small-scale farming examples. We plan to cover other types of projects in future versions.

## What the Funds Will Be Used For

* ### Funding research into problems faced by smallholder farmers in western states of India, having similar geographic conditions. Research is being conducted jointly by ABHA Gaukendrit and MRV Foundation with the academic support from Agriculture Scientists from Junagadh Agriculture University.
* ### Developing MRV Methodologies based on the findings of the research activities to support smallholder farmers participation in VCM.
* ### Recruiting and Training local Climate Rangers for documentation of each regenerative activities carried out at smallholder farms and supporting farmers in adapting the better farming practices.

## Progress So Far
### 1. We have tied up with Junagadh Agriculture University to support our Research in to MRV practices for smallholder farmers. We're currently preparing the detailed project report for the pilot project. We're spending aprx $3000 per month in Research and operational expenses since Jan'23.

### 2. we have selected Our Pilot project partners from the 100s of farm and agriculture related project applicants. We will run pilot project with Abha Gaukendrit, an organisation that works with more than 50,000 smallholder farmers in western India.

### 3. Our total funding requirements for the pilot project will be aprx. US$ 300,000 for the period of one year.

### 4. We have shifted our goal from studying traditional registries to understanding local smallholder farmers' concerns and issues and find MRV best practices that could help them claim credits for the ecoservices that they do as part of their farming practices or on top of it.

## Links
* [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MRV1O1)
* [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/mcAzaR8r65)
* [Website](https://mrv.earth)

## Impacts

* Incentivise smallholder farmers for doing regenerative practices and MRV documentation.
* Improve the scope of VCM to include Biodiversity and other forms of credits.
* Increase citizen participatory methods in VCM, ReFi and climate action.
* Build collaboration with the DeSci community.
* Bring existing MRV tools for the application in small scale projects.
* Develop new tools where gaps are identified.