The Farmer FIRST Programme (FFP) is an ICAR Initiative to move beyond the production and productivity, to privilege the small holder agriculture and complex, diverse and risk prone realities of majority of the farmers through enhancing farmer scientists interface. There are concepts and domain that are new in emphasis like resource management , climate resilient agriculture, production management including storage, market, supply chains, innovation systems etc. The farmer FIRST as a concept of ICAR is developed as farmer in a centric role for research problem identification, prioritization and conduct of experiments and its management in farmers’ conditions. The focus is on farmer’s Farm, Innovations, Resources, Science and technology (FIRST). Two terms   “enriching the knowledge”  and “ integrating technology”  qualify the meaning of farmer FIRST in Indian context. Enriching knowledge signifies the need for the research system as well as farmers to learn from each other  in context to  existing farm environment ,perception of each other and interaction of the subsystems established  around.  Technology integration is looked from the prospective  that the scientific  outputs coming  out from the  research institutions , many times do not fit  as such in the farmers’ conditions  and thus , certain alterations  and adaptations are required at field level for  their acceptance, adoption and success.

      At ICAR CIRC, the Farmer FIRST Programme was initiated from Oct.2016 and is continued till date under the title “Livelihood Improvement through Sustainable Dairy Farming   using Suitable Interventions  in three villages  of Sardhana  block of Meerut district namely Jhitkari, Chhabadiya and Chandana villages  reaching   863 households covering majority of small and marginal farmers  with the objective of productivity enhancement  of dairy based integrated farming system, scientific dairy herd management, technology demonstration like AI, estrus synchronization, ETT, clean milk production, mastitis prevention and control, milk processing and marketing, vermin-composting and livestock waste management ,honey bee keeping as diversified agriculture along with integrated farming with the following objectives

 Objectives:

1. Assessment of productivity of cattle and buffaloes and its impact under dairy based Integrated farming system.

2.  Scientific dairy farming and herd management interventions for technology demonstration , application and human resource development.

3. Clean milk production, processing, post harvest technology and market linkages in dairy enterprise

4.   Livestock waste management and vermi-composting