Helping farmers adapt to climate change : the NEFORD way

Abstract

Significant increases in food production in the 20th century have contributed to the improvement of many farmers’ livelihood and their economic growth. However, the gains have come with disproportionate environmental, cultural, health and social costs. The agriculture in the 21st century will have to address crucial challenges including climate change, by maintaining and enhancing environmental and cultural services and safeguarding nutritional quality, diversity of food and farming systems. Often the problems in agriculture are not solely caused by a lack or failure of science and technology, but instead derive from social, economic or legal framework. It is therefore critical to define first, what problems are best solved by changing social, economic or legal frameworks and second, those which are best solved by using technology. Further, the green revolution era model of transfer of technology is no more valid, particularly, when it comes to complex issues such as natural resource and climate change. Instead, innovative institutional arrangements are essential to successful design and adoption of ecologically and socially suitable agricultural systems. The roles of NGOs should be seen in this context. The advantage of NGOs lies in their independence status, freedom of raising voice of the poor and involvement at the grass-root level. Nand Educational Foundation for Rural Development (NEFORD) is one such NGO committed to transforming quality of live for the rural poor and under-privileged. It is dedicated to achieve sustainable economic development and preserve environment with the focus on marginal communities. NEFORD is leading an initiative called PARIS (Poverty Alleviation through Rice Innovation Systems) to improve food security (increase yields and reduce input cost), enhance flexibility in response to monsoon and climate change and maintain profitability in the market economy. PARIS aims to build “Partnership for Rice Innovation Platform” and “Communication Systems” to improve information flow to farmers and feedback and facilitate communication through out the information supply chain. The project uses ICT to improve access to information on market, cropping choices, weather forecasts and technology options, for which an “Information Hub” has been developed via the internet and village computer centres, to facilitate information flow between farmers and project partners. The program is about taking “Research Into Use” (RIU). We know a lot about the potential uses of different technologies, but what we don’t know is where it is “fit for purpose”. To understand this, we are trying to bring together (a) knowledge of how a technology works, (b) appreciation of different agroecological conditions, in which it might be the best applied and (c) knowledge of socio-economic domain, in which it could be used. Matching the bio-physical and socioeconomic characterizations with the technology profiles (options) enables us to test the usefulness of intervention. The paper highlights the concept of Rice Innovation Systems and describes the functional mechanism and provides examples from the fields on technologies for adaptation to climate change, the nature of trainings to improve farmers’ skills and knowledge and innovative approaches for accelerating the pace of technology adoption to reach out larger number of people in a shortest possible time.