India is moving to the front of the regenerative agriculture movement

Kantharaj has a farm of a little more than a hectare in the hills of Karnataka, Southern India, in a region currently experiencing a 75% reduction in rainfall.  He should be in crisis mode. Fortunately, he is one of many Indian coffee farmers who have maintained a tradition of using shade trees over their coffee bushes, which protects the crop from the worst effects of the drought. Kantharaj is also a demon composter, and his pungent, worm-filled compost has helped him create healthy, water-retentive soil beneath his plants. When I visit his plot, there is no sign that the lack of rain has affected his plump, dark-red coffee cherries, almost ready to be plucked.  

It has made him a minor local celebrity, and he sells a thousand kilos of his hard-working worms to visiting farmers every year and makes instructive videos that are shown at farmer training schools across the State. According to the Indian government, Kantharaj is one of nearly two million farmers who are now using regenerative farming methods. It puts India at the forefront of the global movement to restore damaged soils.  

In a nation of over two hundred million farmers, only a small number have formally adopted regen ag, and the heavily subsidised nature of Indian agriculture means that there are barriers to accelerating uptake. Nevertheless, there are some strong drivers expanding regenerative practice in India, not least the urgent need to address the damage caused to farmland by the first green revolution.  

The unintended consequences of the first green revolution  

Nurtured by the brilliant Indian agronomist Dr. Swaminathan in the late 1960’s, the green revolution used improved crop genetics to drive massive yield increases in wheat and rice production, banishing recent memories of famine, and made India self-sufficient in food. But it also required large inputs of mineral fertilisers and pesticides, and resulted in the overuse of groundwater, which created mineral and water deficient soils across India. India holds the second largest arable farming area in the world, but around a third of it is now degraded, largely because of the shift to high input monocultures. Many of these soils have depleted organic carbon and retain little moisture or microbial life. As a result, the yields of some crops are now stagnant, whilst food demand continues to grow in a nation of 1.4 billion people. Malnutrition also remains stubbornly high in rural India, in part because super yielding rice and wheat, has contributed to the stagnation of production of higher protein crops like millets and pulses. 

By the late 1990’s, Swaminathan could see the damage caused by the high input model he had championed and was calling for a second ‘evergreen’ revolution which would combine high technology with ‘traditional ecological prudence’.  Twenty-five years later there are signs that his amended model is getting traction. Regenerative farming in India is now attracting support from international brands, the cotton and coffee sectors and state and national government.  

An emerging coalition for regenerative farming 

Regenerative farming in India has been pioneered by grassroots farmer groups, seeking to reduce rising input costs and adapt to increasingly erratic rainfall. They have created peer-learning networks like the National Coalition for Natural Farming (NCNF), which links seven hundred thousand farmers in Andhra Pradesh, and Community Based Natural Farming (CBNF) which connects similar numbers in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.  

Now many of the largest buyers of Indian agricultural exports are beginning to invest in regenerative agriculture too, and the early results are impressive.  In Maharashtra, Kellanova, now part of Mars, have invested in a refreshingly simple approach to improving maize production in a key sourcing landscape. Working through Varaha, an Indian carbon project developer, they have provided a rotavator rental service at a much reduced cost to help farmers plough back their maize stubble rather than burn it, which is still the norm in India. As a result, the water retention of the soil has gone up, yields and farmer incomes have improved and the company benefits from a reduced carbon footprint from its maize supply.  

In Madhya Pradesh, major fashion brands, including H&M, BESTSELLER, which includes the brand Jack & Jones and Inditex, which includes Zara, have co-funded regenerative cotton production amongst ninety thousand farmers, working with IDH India. Because the soils were so depleted of organic matter it has been possible to improve soil quality and increase farm yields and farmer incomes very quickly. In less than three years, incomes have improved by 20-30% in the first districts to enter the programme.   

I’m sure that some of the pioneers of the Indian regenerative movement are uncomfortable with this new interest from agri-food businesses, just as the founders of ‘alternative’ energy were disconcerted when large electricity utilities started investing in renewable energy. But as with solar and wind energy it’s the value chain companies that have the resources to bring down costs and to adopt new practices at scale.   

Perhaps the most significant change in the last few years has been the growth in support for regenerative agriculture from the Government of India at federal and state level.  

The Government of India has a financial interest in lowering fertiliser use  

Another of the legacies of the first green revolution is a vast program of subsidised fertiliser use and it comes at huge cost to the government. Before the Strait of Hormuz crisis raised energy costs, India was spending approximately $20 billion a year on fertiliser subsidies. Now it’s estimated to be around $30bn, roughly 10% of the government’s entire revenue expenditure.  In response, Prime Minister Modi has asked farmers to reduce their fertiliser use by up to a half. They can only do that if they are supported to maintain yields with bio-inputs, so the government is also accelerating its support for ‘natural’ farming. It has rolled out soil testing across farms in India and created Agri Stack, a new digital registry for farmers, which already has 100 million farmers registered and aims to improve agricultural services and credit to farmers.  

There is now a consensus between pioneering farmers like Kantharaj, front-runner food companies and the government of India that damaged soils need to be repaired, mineral fertiliser use needs to be reduced, and farming must become more climate resilient. Farmers are cautious by nature, so big change takes time, but it feels like a second agricultural revolution is stirring in India. This one is facilitated by digital infrastructure and centred on farmer practice and soil health rather than plant genetics and chemical inputs.  There is a lot to learn from the extraordinary scale and innovation unfolding in Indian agriculture.