Farming Sustainably in Kharajgaon

At the cusp of the monsoon in Kharajgaon, land had laid barren for months. The countryside was tense and farmers awaited rains. Too early and the crops would die, too late and they can’t be sold. Most farmers took multiple jobs during off-season to support their families. Navin, a farmer we worked with, forced his daughters to leave school to sustain their living costs.

Promised prosperous yield, they adopted inorganic fertilisers and pesticides. “We know that chemicals harm the soil,” said Rakesh. “But what is long run? We are supporting our family this year, we’ll worry about those problems later.” Extracting a lot of groundwater has lowered the water table, productivity, soil health, and trigged soil degradation and erosion. Further, it has made the farmer’s dependent upon these city-sourced products, thus leaking the village economy.

However, the government has subsidised: water storage and micro-irrigation. To address these problems, our project, funded by the Go Make A Difference Foundation, relied upon indigenous Warli knowledge. Drip irrigation is a promising solution, owing to its water-efficiency, pest prevention, and adaptability to local crops. We installed borewells, pumps, tanks, and drip pipes to minimise the reliance on irregular monsoon. Thus, even rice could be grown sustainably. Paddy farming, conventionally, requires intensive field preparation and unsustainable amounts of water for flood irrigation. Through drip irrigation, not only do rice sprouts gain the preferred aerobic conditions, their fields also release less methane.

Business-wise, farmers amass maximum profits by selling large rice quantities and incurring small production costs. But in the wholesale market, prices often crash due to oversupply and slack regulations. “What can we do?” lamented Navin, forced to stock the unsold rice. “Of course, we can eat some of this ourselves, but it feels like we are eating our own money.”

Thus, our project addressed economic security by encouraging crop diversification. Radhika, another farmer, grew chillies, sunflowers, and toor dal with our drip pipes and earned good profits. Yet, a caveat interfering with farmer’s income is beyond their realm: bureaucratic obstacles. There is vast ignorance about government schemes, the documents required, and rampant corruption at the Panchayat level. “We receive Rs 2000 a month,” Rakesh informed us. “And I’m sure they (officials) keep five times of that.” Yet, in a transforming India, traditional knowledge and modern technology can find solutions.