Date: June 22-23, 2009

Venue: MANAGE, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad
 

India's agricultural policies remain tightly rooted in the Green Revolution.  While the GR had dramatic success in raising food production at a time when India faced a major challenge in feeding its population, many have argued that the GR was always irrelevant to the un-irrigated parts of the country. The extension of this singular paradigm across the country, and the resultant widespread adoption of water and chemical demanding crops have resulted in several distortions, including a growing groundwater crisis, soil fatigue, and a rapidly burgeoning fertilizer subsidy.  A fundamental critique of agricultural policies as they relate to the rainfed lands and the scope of emerging options has been articulated at a number of national-level meetings, most recently one hosted by WASSAN and CSA in collaboration with ICAR in New Delhi (see www.rainfedfarming.org).  The workshop also brought out the inequity in relative public investments in the rainfed and irrigated areas. 
 

The establishment of the National Rainfed Areas Authority (NRAA) as a response to the crisis in rainfed areas and the concerns expressed in various policy documents, point to growing mainstream interest in acting on the problems of rainfed areas. Despite this seeming interest however, and despite the mounting evidence pointing to the constituent elements of such a framework, there is little movement in the direction of articulating a relevant national level policy on rainfed areas farming.   
 

A great deal of experimental, pilot work attests to the possibility of sustainable productivity gains based on farming practices that are informed by farmer knowledge systems as opposed to the infusion of crop-technology, water and chemicals.   Results from such work are now available from diverse ecological conditions across the country and where government programs have been willing to experiment, parts of such work have gone to scale. There is critical need to mobilize larger public investments towards a more broad-based scaling up such initiatives, and eventually for a policy-based packaging into a new and more relevant paradigm.  
 

This proposed two day informal brainstorming is aimed at trying to think through short, medium and long-term strategies towards evolving a national rainfed areas agricultural policy and to building a sustained advocacy initiative to realize it.  We are hoping to be a small group of 20-25 people, drawn from across the country and from a range of backgrounds.  The attached draft agenda is structured around a few brief lead presentations with ample time for discussion.  A more complete agenda will be shared in the coming weeks, and we welcome your inputs in developing the same.  We expect to share the outcomes of these discussions at a larger, more formal workshop, later in the year.  

There appears to be broad consensus within civil society, and to some extent within government, on the need for a fresh policy approach to dry land agriculture.  There also appears to be consensus on the need for building a case for and undertaking advocacy towards the formulation of agriculture policy that is more appropriate to the dry lands than the current generalized extension of the Green Revolution.

We hope to identify ways and means by which we can take forward a policy agenda on dry land agriculture.  As you will see from the attached draft agenda, we are trying to structure the meeting in a way that will ensure we have ample time to think through the strategic choices we need to make in formulating short, medium and long term engagement with the issue.  Do let us know if you have thoughts on how we might improve upon this structure. 

The Ford Foundation (FF) is centrally interested in poverty and vulnerability in the Indian dry lands, and over the coming years expects to support a range of initiatives geared towards the formulation of agricultural policies with greater relevance to dry land India.  We are hoping that this brainstorming will contribute towards a determination of key strategies that civil society might wish to pursue, and, by extension, key areas and actions that the donor world could consider supporting.