How to increase farmer’s incomes? How to make agriculture environmentally sustainable at the same time? Two of the most pressing problems for Indian policymakers.
A conference organized by the Institute for Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), on Managing Sustainable Transitions, in November 2023, provided valuable insights through the lens of systems science. Farmers must run their own farms; rather than the market running their farms for them, or governments running their farms with incentives for growing only some crops and subsidies for using only some inputs. Farmers are showing a more holistic way founded on the science of complex systems with noteworthy results.
Sustainable farming is driven by “economies of scope”; not “economies of scale” as industrial farming systems are. A farm run on the principles of biodynamics regenerates itself. It does not require industrial inputs to sustain its productivity, reveals Sarvdaman Patel, who is qualified in agriculture science in the US, and has been running a farm on biodynamic principles in Anand for over 25 years.
Bharat Bhushan Tyagi, a small farmer, explains with his earthy insights, that a sustainable farm is an integrated “socio-environmental-economic” system: in which its social component is critical. It is also an inter-generational “learning” system, he says, and urges academics to learn with farmers, and from them, to understand how natural systems function*.
Apoorva Oza points to the challenge of civil society organizations who want to aid the transition to the new paradigm. They are caught in the middle between the emerging paradigm on the ground and the established scientific-industrial system, which controls resources, and must change its views to enable the transition to the new paradigm.
*I resonate with Tyagi’s exposition of the spatial and temporal structures of evolutionary systems. I have explained them in my book, Shaping the Future: How to Be, Think, and Act in the New World (A Guide for Systems Leaders).