FOOD SECURITY through Community-based Sustainable

Land and Water Management

Experiences from India

Anil AgarwalCentre for Science and Environment

FOOD SECURITY: Two Types

1. NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY

2. LOCAL FOOD SECURITY

People produce enough for themselves in their

own farms. This means good agriculture in your

own local village / farms

Intensive Agricultural zones

Distribution is often a problem

Marketable surplus of agricultural

Produce

Market

PublicDistribution

System

People who

Need Food

Rural Environmental Problemsare very different

• More than 2.5 billion people in developing countries live in rural areas. Of these approximately one billion live below the poverty line.

• And about half a billion live in degraded ecosystems, which is a key reason for their poverty and food insecurity.

Everyone here must note:

• Their problem is not economic poverty. Repeat not economic poverty• It is ecological poverty• I repeat, ecological poverty• It is not the economist's Gross National Product that matters to them.

It is the decline of the Gross Nature Product that matters to them  

  

Their answer lies inHelping the poor to help themselves

  

This is possible because the rural economy is built on natural capital

ECOLOGICAL POVERTY

CreateNATURAL WEALTH

 

CreateECONOMIC WEALTH

India has had several outstanding experiences with good community-based “VILLAGE ECOSYSTEM’’

management during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s

• Ralegan Siddhi• Sukhomajri• Tarun Bharat Sangh / Neemi village• Rajiv Gandhi Watershed Development Mission,• Madhya Pradesh Government ( Jhabua)

  

The potential of water harvesting:Every village can meet its drinking water requirement  

1 hectare + 100mm of rainfall = 1 million litres of water• There is no village in the world which is short of water.

All that an average Indian village needs to meet its drinking water needs is to capture rainfall over 1.12 hectares of land, and during drought years upto 2.24 ha. An average village has 300-400 ha of land.

• I learnt this calculation not in my engineering college but from a desert villager.

                    

The transformation of Ralegan siddhi

• From one of the most destitute villages of India to one of the richest today. 

28%

Rs 40,000 per month

or over $ 10,000 per annum

The starting point ofecological regeneration andeconomic revival was water

• The villagers took control of their ecological destiny in their hands.

• They started harvesting their rainwater endowment.With groundwater recharged, agriculture improved and animal productivity increased.

• Once they became concerned about their water, the villagers also became concerned about their watershed. The hills are today rich and green.

• Distress outmigration has stopped.

Ralegan Siddhi

Sukhomajri

ECONOMIC IMPACT

SUKHOMAJRI : village of 100 – odd households

• Agricultural Development : from food importing to food exporting village.

• Animal Husbandry : Village sells over $ 2000 worth of milk every month.

• Forestry : A US $25 million forest of Acacia catechu now stands in the watershed

TARUN BHARAT SANGHAlwar district , Rajasthan

• Started building traditional water harvesting structures in the mid-1980s

• Today working in over 700 villages

• Several types of small and big structures have been built but no engineer has been involved

Promoting environmental self-reliance

In the first three years, few villages got involved in the water harvesting programme of Tarun Bharat Sangh. With passage of time, the numbers, however, grew rapidly as villagers gained

confidence in the programme and were able to see a positive outcome of their efforts .

TBS has built all kinds of traditional water harvesting structures from small ones to big ones. But no engineer

was involved.

TBS has built all kinds of traditional water harvesting structures from small ones to big ones. But no engineer

was involved.

TBS has built all kinds of traditional water harvesting structures from small ones to big ones. But no engineer

was involved.

TBS has built all kinds of traditional water harvesting structures from small ones to big ones. But no engineer

was involved.

Few know about the economic benefits of building johads. An investment of Rs 100 per capita on

johads raises the economic production in a village by as much as Rs 400 per capita per annum. Greater the investment in water harvesting, greater was the economical return. This was the finding of G D Agrawal, former professor and head of the civil engineering department at the Indian Institute of technology in Kanpur, who assessed Tarun Bharat Sangh’s work in Alwar

The transformation of Neemi

Economic Impact in Neemi in 2 years

• Rent income from agricultural land per annum - Rs 22 lakh (US $50,000)• Sales of milk per month - Rs 1.25 lakh (US $35,000 per year)

Only a fraction of Neemi’s village ecosystem

has been regenerated as yet

Jhabua

Reasons for success of Jhabua

• Public participation was the key to success. This required appropriate financial and institutional strategies.

• Inter-departmental coordination to ensure there was no policy fracture.

• Political will in the form of the personal supervision of the Chief Minister.

The solution here is:

• Let people control their natural resources (get rid of the state)

• Respect traditional knowledge (learn from the villagers themselves) 

• No Harvard, MIT, Cambridge or Delhi University fellow knows village ecosystems better than the villagers themselves.

The paradigm of community-based water management using the technology of water harvesting is spreading.

Today, over 15,000 villages are involved in water harvesting in India. Those who started 15-20 years ago have no problem of drought and their Village Domestic Product has increased by about US $1 million

But for a large part of India we already know the answer:

• Harvest the rainwater endowment of your village.• An average Indian village has access to 340 hectares of

land which gives a rainfall endowment of 3.75 million cubic metres of water.

• That is a lot of water to start improving the productivity of your agricultural lands and watersheds.

• Of course, there will be regional variations. This is where we need combined crop and water management to ensure that all regions can grow substantial quantities of biomass.