100+ farmer presentations from the 19th Organic World Congress.
In November 2017, India hosted a landmark gathering of the global organic movement. For the first time in the Congress's history, the stage was given to farmers themselves. We were part of the OFAI team that helped those farmers prepare their presentations. This archive hosts them as a resource for new farmers, with attribution intact. New entries go up as we find and catalogue material.
About OWC 2017.
The Organic World Congress (OWC) is convened every three years by IFOAM – Organics International, the apex body for the global organic movement. In 2017, the 19th edition came to India for the first time, hosted by the Organic Farming Association of India (OFAI) in partnership with PDA Trade Fairs and the Government of India.
The theme was "An Organic World through an Organic India". The event ran from 9 to 11 November 2017 at the India Expo Centre in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
Scale and significance:
- Thousands of delegates from over 100 countries
- The largest farmer representation in the Congress's history
- Four tracks: Main, Farmers, Science, and Marketing & Quality Assurance
- Around 700 farmer presentations as the centrepiece of the Farmers' Track
What made it different.
For the first time in the Congress's 40-year history, OFAI made the deliberate choice to centre smallholder and practising farmers — especially from Asia, Africa, and Latin America — rather than keep the stage to scientists and policy people. The practical implication was significant: farmers were encouraged to present in their own mother tongues, with decks prepared in English, French, Spanish, or Mandarin and translated into Hindi.
OFAI committed to helping hundreds of farmers turn their field experience into viable presentation decks. That work — done across languages, formats, technical ability, and a very real scale — was the largest act of translation in Indian organic-farming history.
Our role.
We were part of the OFAI team assigned to Farmers' PowerPoint Presentation Processing. Within that team, Karan Manral and Yogita Mehra worked closely with farmers on all the presentations — shaping field experience into clear, communicable slide decks. Over 100 of those presentations came through their hands.
Farmers' PowerPoint Presentation Processing
Karan Manral · Yogita Mehra · Ana Mesquita · Savio D'Souza · Shamika Mone · Binita Shah.
Source: OFAI OWC 2017 Credits
The broader Congress organising effort involved a much larger OFAI team across many functions — from programming and logistics to farmer outreach and the Farmers' Track itself, led by figures including Claude Alvares, one of the founding lights of the Indian organic movement and a long-standing presence in OFAI.
Our role was processing, not authorship. Every presentation in this archive is the work of the individual farmer credited on the slides. We host them here as a resource for new farmers, with original authorship intact.
Featured presentations.
A hand-picked sample of what's in the archive — real farms, real methods, real problems. Click any to open the full PDF.
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Filter by country, topic, crop, language. Full search over titles and farmer names.
Help wanted.
The archive is growing over time. If you're connected to OFAI or were part of OWC 2017 and can help locate material we haven't yet found, we'd be grateful to hear from you. Get in touch.