Solutions at intersection of traditional knowledge & technology can help rural farmers

Last summer, three students conducted an independent project in Karajgaon, Maharashtra, installing water sources and drip irrigation for several families. On returning a year later, these are the observations they made.

At the cusp of the monsoon season, the most strained period for farmers in Karajgaon, land has lain bare for eight months. The countryside is tense and quiet and farmers are waiting for rains to sprout the rice. Too early and the crop will die, too late and they won’t be able to sell it wholesale. With the onset of climate change, the monsoon has grown irregular and arrives later with every passing year, worsening the declining water table and soil health. Most farmers take multiple jobs during the off-season to support their large families.

Navin, one of the farmers we worked with, suffered a brutal leg injury while working at a large factory during this off-season. Before our project, this laid his farmland barren and forced his daughters to leave school in order to work toward sustaining the family’s living costs. “We are farmers, our physical health is what allows us to work,” he told us. “The factories do not take responsibility, but we live with the consequences,” he added.

This is the reality of farmers in Karajgaon — made of power cuts, perilous work and seasonal imbalances — invisible to the bustling, fast-paced Mumbai we had left to carry out our project.

An exception to this was our project’s strongest crutch: Ravi Pereira, who infused hope in us throughout our time there. Having transitioned from city life to full-time farming decades ago, he has found a balance between sustainable agriculture and profit. For example, he harvests and conserves rainwater in a pond where fish are farmed. The water, now rich in nutrients, is streamlined to the crops through a drip irrigation system. Into the pipes, he also adds natural fertiliser and pesticides made from materials like cow dung and tobacco. And from this crop turnout, he has invested in solar-powered tube wells. This type of sustainable, circular agriculture is viable and profitable — and Pereira is proof that solutions exist.

Yet, promised prosperous yield, most farmers adopt the use of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides. “We know that the chemicals harm the soil in the long run,” said Rakesh, a farmer. “But what is the long run? We are thinking of supporting our family this year, we will worry about those problems later.” This approach — though understandable — is common and has led to soil degradation and erosion, lowering productivity. In turn, this makes the farmers dependent on these very city-sourced products to further sustain their crops. This cyclical reliance on urban spaces creates leakages in rural economies. This doesn’t apply simply to farming products. For example, believing that cement is more durable than rural kiln-baked bricks, villagers often buy the former in bulk from the nearby cities to build their houses. In this way, money flows out of the rural circulation into the urban one. Now, a brick-seller will have lower income and spending power on other rural goods, whose vendors will, in turn, have less money to spend. This process has increased every year under India’s rapid urbanisation.

Simultaneously, due to the use of ‘flood’ irrigation for paddy crops combined with slow rainwater absorption due to deforestation, wells empty quickly. They remain empty for months before the arrival of the monsoon, and this creates a dependence of the sprouting season on the first rainfall. With the growing irregularity of the monsoon, this reliance becomes increasingly precarious every year. We observe this problem in many parts of India, with 90 per cent of our country’s groundwater extraction being utilised in agriculture. Though techniques exist to recharge the water table by physically hindering water run-off — from check dams to continuous contour trench structures and restored forests — they require investment, which is mostly unavailable to rural areas. Some initiatives, such as the non-profit Paani Foundation’s ‘water cup’, have seen success. Other smaller projects driven by knowledge sharing and small monetary aid have also had a noticeable impact. Additionally, the government has pushed schemes and subsidies for water storage and micro-irrigation.

In an attempt to address these two problems, our project, funded by the ‘Go Make A Difference’ Foundation, aimed at reconciling indigenous Warli (Adivasi community) knowledge, sustainability and economic security. We found a promising solution in drip irrigation systems, owing to their water efficiency (90 per cent), prevention of pests and adaptability to all local crops and organic fertilisers. Over the course of the project, we had borewells, pumps, tanks and drip pipes installed. The system provided a sustainable means to grow crops in the dry season and minimised the reliance on the monsoon rain for sprouting rice in the kharif season. Additionally, the use of drip irrigation to cultivate rice allows it to grow aerobically. Not only do rice sprouts prefer these conditions in terms of output, but there is also a large reduction in methane emissions that usually arise from the anaerobic conditions (lack of oxygen) of paddy cultivation through flood irrigation.

Clearly, the conventional methods of paddy farming require unsustainable amounts of water, intensive field preparation and large methane emissions. So, why this emphasis on growing rice crops? The answer to this is apparent: Money. In terms of profit, farmers gain the most amount of money by selling large quantities of rice and using a smaller quantity of seeds. However, this is not black and white: On the wholesale market, there is a certain ‘quota’ at a determined price. While the price goes down according to the traditional supply-demand mechanism — worsened by an unregulated minimum support price — what often happens is an over-production. “What can we do?” asked Navin, forced to store the rice he has painstakingly grown throughout the year. “Of course, we can eat some of this ourselves, but it feels like we are eating our own money.” 

Our project attempted to address this problem, emphasising crop diversification, which can be achieved through growing crops outside the kharif season. On returning this year, we saw that Radhika, another farmer we had worked with, had taken to growing green chillies, toor daal (pigeon pea) and sunflowers with the drip pipes. She earned a higher profit by expanding to different markets and utilising the seeds from previous harvests, effectively reducing her input costs. 

One year later: A farmer with her produce under drip irrigation

Yet, one of the biggest caveats interfering with farmer income and well-being is outside the practical realm: Bureaucratic obstacles. Before our project, we had been aware of the specific yojanas (schemes) the government had in place in the agricultural sector. We had anticipated a large potential for government schemes and provisions to ameliorate the farmers’ conditions, such as MSP, surplus purchasing, or equipment loans.

On asking the farmers, we found out that there was a significant lack of awareness about these schemes due to a lack of digital literacy, difficulty in submitting documents such as Aadhar cards that permitted access to the schemes and the presence of corruption at the Panchayat level that enabled the pocketing of large portions of the subsidies. “We receive Rs 2,000 a month,” Rakesh told us. “And I’m sure they keep five times of that.” However, despite the villagers’ dissent, there is a strong hierarchy between the commoner and local public officials. This renders officers unapproachable and demands suppressable.

Still, under India’s consistently urbanising landscape, there seems to be a way to halt this cyclical process: Enriching rural areas through solutions found at the intersection of traditional knowledge and technology. This is easier said than done, yet we have seen with our smaller-scale project and larger-scale initiatives that these solutions are possible and immensely impactful. So, whether through government spending, private investment or donor-based funding, we can shift our resources to follow our change of ethics — creating a stronghold against the disproportionate effects of climate change.

Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth

Nayantara Alva (India), Giulia Rocca (Italy) and Josephine Kalwij (UK) were all students at the United World College of the Adriatic in Italy (2022). At the time of the farmers’ protests in India, they were inspired by the ‘Go Make A Difference’ grant to make a change. Building upon their deep complementary interests in the scientific and socio-economic aspects of environmental challenges, they came together to create this project. 

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