Women farmers adapt to climate change with bio-diverse farming

Nirmala’s family owns 3.5 acres of land and has been growing cotton and tur. A few years ago, soyabean used to be one of their main cash crops. But delayed rains and sometimes a prolonged rainy season, started playing truant that affected their yield. While soyabean crop looked healthy from outside but didn’t bear fruit.

Now, they have stopped growing soyabean. Even the cotton crop is under pink bollworm attack. Nirmala realized that to save the loss, she needs to change the crop and sowing pattern. She decided to grow 16 varieties of food crop, including millets and vegetables on one acre since past 2 years, and it has helped her sustain.

Jyoti’s husband — a small farmer — committed suicide last year. After his death Jyoti, a mother of two teenagers, is the sole earning member of her family. With farming being the only livelihood option for her, she has realized that currently cotton yield was fluctuating. Like Nirmala, she too decided to dedicate one acre of land for biodiverse farming.

Jyoti observed that the changes in climate pattern have seen a rise in pest attacks on crops. She is aware that her economic condition will not allow her to invest more in farming. So, with a small investment, she opted to grow food crops and vegetables, which may not bring her much money but will suffice to feed the family.

Bailwada village (about 20km from Nagpur), once famous for big tomatoes (locally known as chakri tomatoes which had a unique taste and remained fresh for long) has, over the years witnessed the changing climate has led to a near-death of this variety of tomatoes.

Green chillies and tomatoes from Bailwada village fetched a handsome income for the farmers who used to preserve the seeds for the next crop. But now the situation is different. The seeds could not be preserved due to changes in rain pattern that has caused a near-irreversible damage to the tomato and chili crop.

For the last few years, they have been buying tomato saplings from the market at a higher rate and the seeds from this crop cannot be preserved. This increased their input cost, and the returns were low. So, nine women of this village decided to switch to biodiverse farming.

Nirmala, Shobha, Madhuri, Meena are among them. All these women are small farmers who grow turmeric, suran (yam), drumsticks along with other vegetables including tomatoes. They look forward to preserving the seeds for the next crop.

Millets like jowar (sorghum), jawas (flax seed), bajra (pearl millet) were also grown in these villages which require low investment and are a useful animal feed too. As the village population grew, the green cover decreased and animals frequently attacked crops. Thus, the farmers stopped growing millets. These women now are taking millets like, rajgira (Amaranth), bajra and oil seeds like sesame.

For saving their crop from animal attacks, these women have many ideas like placing naphthalene balls wrapped in cotton cloth on the fencing, putting saree fencing, solar fencing, putting up loud ringing instruments etc.

It’s been three years that Padma has been part of biodiverse farming. She admits that earlier she never associated change in rainfall pattern to climate change. As a small farmer, she has changed her farm practices to make it more climate resilient. Moong, urad, matki crop that she now grows helps her in improving the soil quality.

When these nitrogen-rich crops were not grown by Padma and most other farmers, the soil health deteriorated due to prolonged summer and rampant use of chemical fertilizers. Now with urad, moong, matki which are rich in nitrogen, the soil health will slowly improve, believes Padma. Growing cotton for monetary gains is important but devoting a small piece of her land to bio-diverse farming suits her and she is happy that she is aware of what she is doing.

(The women farmers are associated with Prakriti – a Nagpur-based NGO, which promotes women farmers’ collectives and strengthens their livelihoods)