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| ISSUE NO. 665 |
| This week's newsletter is part of an ongoing series by Sanket Jain on indigenous crops being cultivated by last-generation farmers in India. You can read Jain's essays on finger millet, maize, indigenous sorghum, ancient wheat, and traditional black gram in our archive. Jain is an independent journalist and documentary photographer based in Kolhapur, India. He is a Senior People's Archive of Rural India fellow, where he's documenting vanishing livelihoods and dying art forms from India's remote villages, and is also the co-founder of Insight Walk, a nonprofit that offers teaching fellowships to rural community women. These women work to ensure every child in their village has access to contextual education of their choice - at Insight Walk, every student designs their own syllabus. Follow Jain's work on instagram @snkt_jain. WHENEVER A FARMER ABANDONS . . .
“At 13, I started supporting my parents by working in the fields,” she remembers. One farm crop she remembers her parents, Anandrao Khandekar, 70, and Madhuri, 65, cultivated is the traditional groundnut (peanut), which she says is the powerhouse for impoverished people.
With no irrigation facility, her parents relied on the rains to cultivate crops. “Groundnut requires less water, so we always sowed it just before the rains.”
Today, 27 years later, Kagwade, 40, says there hasn’t been a year where she didn’t cultivate it. This is significant because Kagwade’s village of Khochi in Western India’s Maharashtra state has been facing recurring floods, changing the farming pattern. The traditional groundnut variety is sowed sometime in June. “Usually, it floods either in July or August. So farmers prefer cultivating sugarcane because it remains safe until the water enters its vascular bundle, roughly over eight feet.”
So, most farmers are now moving towards water-guzzling sugarcane. This trend is rapidly spreading across the country, as India harvested over 500 million metric tonnes of sugarcane last year.
“Moreover, now farmers here use a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to harvest the crops sooner before another flood destroys everything,” she says. This has impacted the soil, cattle, and human health, as well as degrading the environment. The losses don’t end with floods. Her region also bears the brunt of heat waves, hail storms, and incessant rainfall. “Cultivating the traditional variety is extremely helpful as it has a higher resistance to both pests and climatic events and doesn’t require any chemical fertilizers or harmful pesticides,” says Kagwade. This has also helped significantly bring down the cost of production, especially when losses around are mounting.
Last year, on 0.25 acres of land, she sowed five kilograms of groundnut and managed a bumper produce of 300 kilograms. After separating the cover, it was around 200 kilograms. “Earlier, when the climate was better, we easily harvested 400 to 500 kilograms,” she says, talking of the early 2000s. “Despite such major climatic changes, I still got a much better produce.” Meanwhile, the farmers who cultivated hybrid groundnut varieties in her region reported a complete loss because of the untimely rainfall.
For Kagwade, it’s not just about the crop surviving the climatic events. The traditional variety, she says, tastes sweet. In Maharashtra and several parts of India, groundnut is integral to everyday food. It also has multiple benefits, like its oil is used in cooking, and the molasses left behind are good cattle feed.
While the traditional variety takes almost 40 days more to grow than hybrid ones, its fodder remains nutritious cattle feed. In her region, it fetches almost $2.5 per kilogram, while the hybrid varieties sell for just $1.2. Another benefit of the traditional variety is that its seeds have over three years of shelf life. “Once sun-dried, these seeds remain good for a long time,” she shares.
Since 2008, several hybrid groundnut varieties have been released in the Indian farming market, but Kagwade was very careful in adopting them. To make ends meet, she cultivates a few of them as the production is almost double that of the traditional variety in less time.
India produced 6.3 million metric tonnes of groundnut last year, the second highest worldwide. The United States Department of Agriculture says that 100 grams of raw groundnuts contain 567 calories, making it a wholesome food, keeping hunger away for longer. Moreover, since it’s an excellent source of protein with good dietary fibers, it provides strength. As a result, many farmers consume it before starting laborious work in the fields. “This helps us sustain for a long time and is even good for health,” she says.
Despite its immense benefits, there are several caveats. “Harvesting the traditional variety isn’t easy. It spreads across a larger distance and holds the soil firmly,” she says. This makes it difficult to harvest, forcing the farmers to abandon the crop. “However, this quality of holding the soil firmly makes it climate-resilient,” explains Kagwade.
Hybrid groundnut, she says, was first cultivated around 15 years back in her village. Within a few years, the traditional varieties almost vanished, and today it is cultivated only by a handful of farmers.
With the rising cost of farming and living, surviving on groundnut isn’t possible. So Kagwade also cultivates sugarcane. “I maintain a fine balance between traditional and modern farming. Indigeneous groundnut is our farming legacy, and I won’t let it down,” she says.
Yours in food, justice, and food justice, |
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