At the ongoing annual UN Climate Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, entire days are devoted to two important sectors that directly affect the lives of millions of people in India: agriculture and water. In times of stagnant income and groundwater scarcity, we must enable farmers to make choices that improve their incomes while helping them reduce water demand.
The so-called ‘lock-in’ is among the factors that hold back progress on this front. When prefixed with ‘carbon’, these refer to systems designed for continued intensive use of fossil fuels. Just as breaking carbon lock-in is key to addressing climate change, there are lock-ins around water use in agriculture that must be tackled.
India’s current system is geared towards growing high water-use and energy-intensive crops. The Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) estimates that more than 60% of irrigation in India is done through groundwater. As of 2015, there were about 20 million pump sets using energy in India, which means that the agriculture sector accounts for about 20-22% of the total electricity consumption.
Much of this is used to grow water-intensive crops such as paddy; About a quarter of India’s net cultivable area is under rice cultivation. It is mainly grown in the Punjab-Haryana belt using groundwater irrigation. In the rich alluvial aquifers that underlie the northern plains of India, water is receding and replenishment is slow. Pumping it requires a considerable amount of energy as many farmers in these two states use deep bore-wells with high pumping capacity. Why do farmers continue to cultivate paddy when it is clearly bad for the sustainability of the environment? The reason is simple: the risk associated with such crops is low given their massive procurement by the government at the minimum support price (MSP).
In such a scenario, farmers are ‘locked in’ to grow crops that require a lot of water and energy. They see this not only as a way to maximize profits, but also as the best way to minimize risk. Studies have shown that farmers are most affected by price and production risks.
When generations of farmers follow certain patterns of behavior in terms of crop choices or farming practices, it is difficult for them to break out of it. Lock-ins determine how farmers choose their crops, irrigate their fields and use energy. The specific ways of doing things are so rigid that the actors involved often resist change. Furthermore, modifying one element in the system may provide little benefit due to its relationship to the others.
There are many causes of lock-in that are carbon and water intensive. First, there is path dependence in agriculture. Physical infrastructure has been established in terms of cold storage, granaries and markets to support the current cropping options. New crops will require new supply chains that can be costly to set up. Second, traditional agricultural practices have evolved over centuries based on specific skills and expertise. Adoption of new farming methods will require additional investment in capacity. Third, consumption patterns are based on the crops currently grown. For example, Indian cuisine is dominated by rice and wheat. These cultural preferences have evolved over the decades. Their adoption will take time, even if there are nutritional benefits in switching to other cereals such as millets.
In conclusion, the Indian agriculture sector exhibits silent ways of thinking and working. For example, if we need to understand the impact of a specific intervention such as solar irrigation on farmers, we need to measure changes in their energy consumption, their income and water use. This means that different government ministries and departments need to work together at the policy design stage to address complex challenges spanning sectors. The piecemeal approach to breaking the lock-in has not worked.
To break the paddy-wheat farming pattern in Haryana, the state government introduced maize into its MSP system. For the first three years of its introduction, large tracts of land (about 100,000 hectares) were converted to maize cultivation. The government procured this maize through Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) for the first three years. However, as there was insufficient demand, delivery rates were poor. Eventually, farmers stopped cultivating maize because procurement did not match production. Obviously, from production to consumption, the entire system has to be set up for change.
There is also a positive example of a state government focusing on creating an ecosystem for farms for a crop like millet that uses less water. The case of the Odisha Millet Mission underscores the extent of change needed to make big, lasting changes.
What the Odisha government did differently was that it not only offered MSP for millets, but also ensured complete procurement of the crop and its distribution. This encouraged the consumption of millet at the local level by introducing millet as a part of the Public Distribution System (PDS), Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and even the mid-day meal scheme in schools. This ensured that demand and supply were matched.
No single solution can enable lasting change in agriculture. We need a systemic approach that includes policy modifications, technologies, incentives and behavioral modifications. Moving away from the silent ways of working in the country’s agriculture sector towards a low-carbon and less-water-using future is critical.
Anjali Neelakantan leads research and development at the Center for Social and Environmental Innovation at ATREE, Bengaluru.
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