STATE OF MOUNTAIN AGRICULTURE REPORT STATE OF THE HIMALAYAN FARMERS AND FARMING A study about social, economic and ecological factors changing the mountain agriculture scenario INTEGRATED MOUNTAIN INITIATIVE This study is a part of the project “Strengthening Institutional Capacities for Sustainable Mountain Development in the Indian Himalayan Region” awarded by FAO under the TCP/IND/3601/C1 to IMI 1 STATE OF MOUNTAIN AGRICULTURE REPORT Foreword Any agricultural transformation across the states of India Himalayan region must address local changes in the cropping pattern, appropriate understanding and adoption of new technologies, role of agriculture and allied activities in the aspiration of the young generation and issues of sustainability and scale. This project report attempts to cover some of these. It tries to inform on the status of food security and economic wellbeing of farmers as agri- entrepreneurs in the Indian Himalayan Region while holistically covering land resources of Himalayan farmers, change in farming practices, livelihoods, migration, agro-biodiversity, climate change, new age practices, future potential in Himalayan states and experiments with organic farming. Sushil Ramola Climate change and other uncertainties have an escalating adverse President impact on farming based livelihoods due to global warming and Integrated Mountain Initiative consequent shift in agro-climatic conditions, water security issues and associated disasters, among others. Farming communities cope with these changes based on their perceptions and empirical evidences of changing climatic patterns. This report seeks to understand the challenges, coping mechanisms and necessary steps to transform agriculture practices by bringing in a large number of factors and uncertainties into account which go beyond climate change. While the Himalayan ecosystem has evolved and adapted to natural changes, the human civilization seeks revolutionary developments and has forced changes which will impact its future generations adversely unless the issues are addressed immediately in an integrated and multi-dimensional way, keeping in mind the carrying capacity of the Himalayan ecosystem. A case study of apple precision farming as a mix of traditional and new technology intensive farming has been documented as an effort by New Age agri-entrepreneurs in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Uttarakhand to build a new future. There is a potential to expand the learning from these efforts to many other mountain states and also adapt for other agri-sectors. I thank Dr. Shyam Khadka, India Representative, Food and Agriculture Organisation for entrusting this study to Integrated Mountain Initiative (IMI), a civil society institution with the capability of bringing diverse stakeholders from across the mountain states together, to address complex issues of climate change, agriculture, in general, mountain livelihoods, and seeking long term solutions. I also thank Dr. Tej Partap, Vice Chancellor of Govind Ballabh Pant University, Pant Nagar and a founding Council member of IMI for leading this study. We believe that this work and the results of this report will serve as an important reference document for our stakeholders across mountain states. It will be an important tool as a challenge to transform the lives and livelihoods of our people through better research, policies and practice. 2 STATE OF MOUNTAIN AGRICULTURE REPORT Acknowledgments The person who thought IMI should engage itself in undertaking such a study was the late Dr RS Tolia. It was his dedication and persistence that convinced FAO the value of funding this IMI project. I am sure IMI and FAO would join me in paying tribute to him, who conceived and wrote this project and asked me to lead it when it was approved by FAO for funding. Unfortunately, due to his untimely demise during the course of this project, he couldn’t be here to witness the completion of the project. I am extremely grateful to FAO who saw value in this work and agreed to fund it. I would also extend my gratitude to the FAO and IMI both for showing patience with me for accepting new timelines for completion of the series of project reports and this final Dr. Tej Partap document, since June 2018. Vice Chancellor The study demanded a comprehensive field exercise across all the GBPUAT, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand Himalayan states. For accomplishing this gigantic task over one and a half year period, I received support and services of experts, local support teams and the key stakeholders – the farmers in the villages under study. My sincere gratitude to all of them and especially to the state chapters of IMI. The villagers have been eager and impatient to share their experiences and perceptions even beyond the points I had in my field notes to ask them. It greatly enriched the findings. Two workshops on New Age Farmers and on Upscaling Himalayan Apple Economy were organized in partnership with two different agencies. The National Academy of Agriculture Sciences (NAAS) Delhi hosted New Age Farmers Workshop in November 2017 and Progressive Growers Association of Himachal Pradesh in Shimla hills provided logistical support to organize the apple workshop in Shimla Hills in May 2018. Their gracious support is highly acknowledged. Among many others whose contribution I am grateful to are two names I need to mention here: Dr C.S. Vaidya and John Paulraj. Dr Vaidya helped in gathering and compiling secondary information, scanning of literature, government reports etc. He was kind to permit liberal use of his own research work at the Agro Economic Research Centre. John Paulraj provided administrative support from IMI office in Delhi. I am also immensely grateful to the staff at FAO in New Delhi, especially Uma Balaji for their unceasing support and patience during the entire period of this project. I also benefitted a lot from another field study on agriculture and nutrition in the Himalayan region which I did for ICIMOD earlier. The field experiences, raw information and data gathered during that study has also been put to use, wherever I felt it would supplement the findings. For that I am also thankful to ICIMOD. 3 STATE OF MOUNTAIN AGRICULTURE REPORT Sushil Ramola and Fantry Mein Jaswal, two colleagues in IMI, were kind enough to spare time to assist in accomplishing the study. Ramola was instrumental in shaping the design of the two workshops i.e. New Age farmers and upscaling apple economy of the Himalayas, besides his continued involvement at every stage of the study. Fantry Mein Jaswal helped me in undertaking the field study in Arunachal Pradesh. Mr PD Rai offered his valuable suggestions at different stages of the study. I thank them for their valuable inputs. Last but not the least, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Shyam Khadka, former FAO Resident Representative, India. He was like one of my team members in thinking through this study. On several occasions, we spent hours discussing about the state of affairs in the Indian Himalayan Region and the necessity to capture their issues in this study. I acknowledge that it is because of his insightful inputs that this report is entirely different than what I had initially thought. His support and encouragement in taking a very different line in structuring this work and adding new activities down the line were originally not planned and were important knowledge inputs to this work. He himself participated in these, giving important intellectual inputs in the workshops i.e. New Age farmers and apple economy. Personally, leading implementation of this project has been very useful in refreshing my knowledge of Himalayan agriculture systems, which has been my area of study since the 1980s. I thoroughly enjoyed the knowledge gained through the project and also its provision of a far-sighted knowledge and information will serve a great purpose in the future. Acronyms MGNREGA Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act PDS Public Distribution System ICIMOD International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development IMI Integrated Mountain Initiative IHR Indian Himalayan Region FAO Food and Agriculture Organization 4 STATE OF MOUNTAIN AGRICULTURE REPORT Table Of Contents An Overview.........................................................................6 Land Resources of Himalayan Farmers..............................................8-9 Himalayan Farmers, Changing Farming: A Macro view .............................11-13 Himalayan Farmers Livelihoods and Economy: A Ground Report ..................15-17 Farmers Migration from Uttarakhand Hills .........................................19 PDS and MGNREGA as change agents of Himalayan Farmers livelihoods and farming..........................................................................21 Agro-biodiversity under transforming Himalayan agro-ecosystems................23-26 Himalayan Farmers responses to Climate Change ..................................28-29 Glimpses of future-New age Himalayan Farmers ...................................31 Glimpses of future in Himalayan Niche Potentials: A case study about upscaling Himalayan apple economy ................................................33-34 Gimpses of future: Experiments with organic farming by the Himalayan States ....................................................................36-37 Farming by Himalayan Farmers faces the threat of changes and missing mountain thinking in research and development strategies................39-40 Synthesis of the state of affairs......................................................41