Adaptation of small scale farmers to climatic risks in India - Sustainet

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3.4 Adaptation strategies of small-scale farmers Natural variability of weather has always been high in Anantapur, rendering agriculture often precarious. Climate change is expected to further enhance weather variability and impose additional challenges on small-scale farmers. Some adaptation and coping strategies farmers in Anantapur were mentioning during interviews are discussed in the following paragraph. These practices may however not be sufficient to deal with future impacts of climate change. 3.4.1 Coping through migration and sales of assets One of the most common coping strategies in drought years was and still is migration. The male members or whole families migrate to nearby towns to search for work in the non-agricultural, mostly in the construction sector. In hard times, children are taken out of school and send to work to support the family. If the whole family migrates, the cattle are taken along whenever possible. However, insufficient fodder stocks and high prices for the same in dry periods, constrain the farmers to sell their animals. This is not a sustainable practice as prices for cattle in drought periods fall drastically due to excess supply. In better times, cattle have to be repurchased at higher prices as farmers are dependent on additional income through milk sales and on cow dung for fertilizing purposes. 3.4.2 Agricultural practices Delayed sowing: During interviews, farmers revealed that they are adjusting their cropping calendar to changing weather conditions. According to them, the beginning of the monsoon season is constantly shifting backwards, reducing the length of growth period for crops. Traditionally, end of April used to be the time for sowing crops. Farmers could expect first monsoon rains soon after and rainfall was mostly constant until August. Nowadays, the rains are frequently delayed by several weeks and are less regularly distributed over the rainy season. Accordingly, sowing time has gradually shifted to mid May or even beginning of June. This is adaptation per necessity, as a reduced growing season means less crop yields. Farmers do not have a choice as sowing early without irrigation would produce crop failure. Changing cropping patterns: As the growing seasons get shorter, farmers are constraint to adapt their cropping patterns. Where no irrigation is available, farmers have stopped growing paddy as the crop failed too often because of deficient rainfall. Pearl- and Finger-Millet as well as short duration pulses (red gram) are planted instead. The disadvantage is that millets are very labour intensive to harvest and growing them implies a decreasing social status. Millets are in fact considered to be “food for the poor”. Also selling surpluses is not lucrative as the price for millets is very low. However, growing millets and pulses instead of rice has several advantages: These crops are better adapted to local conditions: They are more heat resistant, need less water and have shorter growing cycles. This allows for increased food security for the farmers and their families and preserves scarce water resources. Additionally, crop residues from millets are good fodder, which can be dried and stored over the year, allowing maintenance of a bigger cattle population. 42 42
However, the rainfall quantity is not the only problem: “If we get rain nowadays, it is very common that it rains heavily and for a shorter time than it used to earlier. The problem with this is that the soils are not able to take up all the water and lots of it runs off to unproductive areas. In general, we witness a decrease in soil moisture and therefore in productivity of our fields.” Mixed cropping is a promising adaptation strategy for small-scale farmers to reduce risk of complete crop failure. Some farmers have started growing groundnut together with pigeon pea, which mitigates the risk from reduced groundnut yields. Both crops are well adapted to water scarce conditions prevailing in Anantapur and grow well even on relatively poor soils. Mixed cropping of different vegetables like eggplant, tomatoes and ladyfingers together with corn and millets is working well too. Despite mixed fields are more labour intensive for farmers, they do have several other advantages: They are less prone to pest attacks, allow for a diversified diet, spread the risk of having no yields at all from failure of one crop and thus generate additional income in the long run. 43 43
Page 1 and 2: Adaptation of small scale farmers t
Page 3 and 4: Disclaimer This report is the resul
Page 5 and 6: 3 CASE STUDY ANDHRA PRADESH 35 3.1
Page 7 and 8: 6.3.1 Agriculture sector 83 6.3.2 I
Page 9 and 10: 1 Climate Change India: An Introduc
Page 11 and 12: of its share in the GDP, it is stil
Page 13 and 14: 1.2.2 National Farmers Policy 2007
Page 15 and 16: maintenance of soil fertility both
Page 17 and 18: Figure iii Farmer presenting the re
Page 19 and 20: 2 Case Study Rajasthan 2.1 Backgrou
Page 21 and 22: According to farmers, the weather s
Page 23 and 24: Reduction in rainfall is considered
Page 25 and 26: 2.3.3 Impact on Livelihood Farmers
Page 27 and 28: Adoption of biodiversity based orga
Page 29 and 30: 2.4.2 Water sector The most limitin
Page 31 and 32: Furrow irrigation: small trenches i
Page 33 and 34: 2.5 Recommendations for future acti
Page 35 and 36: 3 Case Study Andhra Pradesh 3.1 Bac
Page 37 and 38: satisfying basic food requirements.
Page 39 and 40: 3.3 Climate Change Impacts The foll
Page 41: Reduced income and food security: A
Page 45 and 46: The results of the regulation schem
Page 47 and 48: “Extension services are very impo
Page 49 and 50: provided by the local seed dealers.
Page 51 and 52: 4.1.1 Climate The climate varies fr
Page 53 and 54: Padam Singh, 52 years, of Nala vill
Page 55 and 56: Table 5: People’s perceptions of
Page 57 and 58: More attack of insects and pests: F
Page 59 and 60: This is one of the important practi
Page 61 and 62: Figure xiv Indigenous variety of pa
Page 63 and 64: term resilience of agro ecosystems
Page 65 and 66: 5 Case Study Orissa 5.1 Background
Page 67 and 68: 5.2 Evidences of Climate change Ori
Page 69 and 70: The tribal population of the study
Page 71 and 72: years, but what it is certain that
Page 73 and 74: Figure xvii Farmer's fields with tr
Page 75 and 76: Figure xviii Rejuvenated forests af
Page 77 and 78: Figure xix Watershed management pla
Page 79 and 80: 5.5.2 Agriculture related For the r
Page 81 and 82: 6.1.2 Rainfall The rainfall pattern
Page 83 and 84: One of the major concerns expressed
Page 85 and 86: ten bore wells, only five were succ
Page 87 and 88: epay. Of the 3.4 million cotton far
Page 89 and 90: Table 14: crop combination in the
Page 91 and 92: wet season and less cracking afterw
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7 Summary and Conclusions: This rep
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Promotion of Sustainable agricultur
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States Summary of insights: Experie
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9 References 1. A. Kitoh, R. Knutti
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32. Pashupalak, 2009: Climate chang
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Adaptation of small scale farmers to climatic risks in India - Sustainet

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