Nurturing nature and communities: A responsible cotton story

By Neha Sinha, WWF India.

Gandam Venkatavva wakes up at 5.30 AM each morning. Between 6 AM to 9 AM, the fifty-year-old farmer finishes tasks at home –cooking, cleaning and other chores.

By 9.30 AM, she is in her intercropped cotton fields for a workday that ends at 9 PM. When we meet in her fields in Sundaragiri (in Warangal in the Indian state of Telangana), the sun is high in the sky, and it is blisteringly hot.

But just a couple of weeks ago, torrential rains caused the Telangana government to call for school and college closure. Close to Warangal, the rains were so heavy that they washed away a part of the railway tracks.

By late September, the rain has slowed to a drizzle, mostly in the evening. By now, her cotton plants have flowers; some even have cotton bolls peeking out from between the green of the field. Frequent rains at this time will cause flowers to drop, increase pest attacks, and destroy open bolls. Rains are erratic now, and climate variability is just one of the challenges that Venkatavva faces. Others include previously degraded soil quality, pest attacks and a diminishing harvest.

These agricultural problems require a multi-pronged approach. Also, the solutions need to be intuitive, addressed in a manner that doesn’t create further problems. (For example, excessive chemical pesticides can also kill beneficial pollinators and contaminate water supplies.) Solutions to existing challenges like pests and degraded soil quality should not create more problems, like that of pollution.  

Regenerative agriculture in cotton production

WWF and IKEA have introduced responsible farming practices that help Venkatavva with the many challenges faced  in cotton agriculture production, in a manner that avoids environmental harm. WWFs regenerative agriculture practices involves major focus on improving soil health so that the soil can regenerate nutrients that plants need while removing highly hazardous chemicals to enhance pollinators to support production services.

Some of the methods include using natural compost instead of chemical fertilisers, natural pesticides, intercropping which involves growing two or more different crops together in the same field at the same time, and physical traps for pests.

“My field is different from others,” she tells me. I look again at the cotton. Not everything is a waving monoculture. I can see a diversity of plants. “In my fields, I grow cotton, but I also grow mangoes and green gram. In three years, the trees will give me my first mangoes.” She tells me the soil gets a break if it has intercropping; the green gram is still young and tender, while the cotton has grown tall. If the rains come again, at least part of her crops will survive.

In the middle of the field, a lone stick draws my eye. She shows me what it is for. There is a sticky trap for insects like aphids, a small bug which feeds by sucking sap from plants.There’s also a pheromone trap for other pests. A tool used to catch insects comprising of a perfumed portion which attracts insects which then land inside a knotted, conical plastic bag. For emptying, the bag is unknotted and straightened. It’s a simple, cost-effective device which also uses biodegradable plastic. It indicates how many pests are emerging, to target action and effort. “I used to spend a lot more time and money spraying fields with chemical insecticide. Now, my effort for managing pest control is more focused. The trap does its own job,” she says.

She knows she can’t control the rain, but is willing to field more innovative ideas for her crops. In the fields supported by the WWF and IKEA partnership, soil organic carbon has increased from 0.32 to 0.44 (measured as percentage of 100 units of dry soil).

In another part of Telangana—this one received a little less local rain in late September—the cotton fields are intercut with purplish-red Sita flowers (a local name for a flower from the cockscomb family). There is a long container at one end of the field which is full of stubble. This is a compost pit. G Harish, a twenty-seven year old farmer shelters from the sun under a Neem tree in his farm in Sriramulapalli.

“Farming today is not how it used to be,” he grins. “For my father’s generation, farming was hard. Today, it is easy.” Harish’s generation have piped irrigation. And they have adopted new techniques like intercropping, and creating compost out of farm waste and stubble. Today 21,891 farmers are implementing regenerative agriculture practices for 16,756 hectares of cotton fields.

A refuge for wildlife

The Sita flowers in Harish’s fields are part of an effort to bring back pollinators. While cotton flowers self-pollinate, some plants are also pollinated by bees. Harish also grows green gram, bitter gourd and ginger along with cotton. “Earlier we used to burn the stubble to clear the field. Now, we take the stubble and compost it. Burning the stubble also killed earthworms, which we want to preserve now because we use them in vermicompost. Overall, I’d say I’m enjoying farming.”

A neighbouring farmer, Ch. Venkat Reddy, 58, doesn’t fully agree with his young friend. He has been farming for 40 years—having started at 18 years of age—and he thinks farming is still fairly tough to do. He remembers the time when a local politician campaigned for farmer’s rights and later became the Chief Minister of the state. But he reports satisfaction at the availability of water, and at being able to use waste from the field to till the soil. The compost pit is helpful and practical, and combined with drip irrigation, intercropping is showing commercial results. The farmers use a combination of chemical and organic pesticide. While this is not a complete weaning away from chemicals, it is enough to kill pests.

This also ensures that the fields have biodiversity – including insect predators like the carnivorous dragonfly. In the fields, I spot the slender-bodied Green marsh hawk and red-orange Ditch jewel dragonflies. In a tank between two fields, a heronry of egrets shines across the water. And in an unplanted stretch, a young Red-naped ibis begs its mother for food. There are Lime butterflies and Common rose butterflies everywhere. Baya weaver nests hang from coconut trees. There are tailorbirds and White-breasted kingfishers. It’s not a wildlife reserve, but it is certainly a refuge for some types of wildlife.

Soil erosion solutions

Telangana is a hot, dry state with temperatures that routinely cross 50 degrees Celsius. The extremes can be hard for plants, people and wildlife. Dust blowing across the landscape – from rock erosion, or slope erosion- settles on leaves, making cultivation difficult, farmers say. Community land also faces another threat – of illegal encroachment. Making agroforestry plantations can counter some of these threats. It is difficult to encroach land which has trees growing on them, farmers say. In Rukmapur and Marrivanipally villages, farmers are developing plantations to keep soil in place– the roots of trees prevent the dislodging of soil.

Through the partnership with IKEA, WWF has joined forces with local farmers and  completed the plantation of 1.14 million trees, with a 71% survival rate. This contributes to the idea of an interconnected cotton production landscape which has ecological links to natural features such as wetlands, rivers, and forests. When conserved, these natural features can enhance production services of agriculture in landscape. For example, a healthy forest or natural area aids in pollination of crops by helping maintain pollinator populations.

In Marrivanipally, slopes in between trees have runnels of soil going down the inclines. Rains dislodge soil, making it run in muddy channels which go straight into tanks and wells. In a water-deficit (but dusty area), this can make water less usable. Farmers say they spent up to 18,000 rupees per annum to clear excess mud from their fields. Planting trees arrests some of this soil erosion. In the extreme heat, they also provide an invaluable service—shade, which is worth its weight in gold. Now, a bee and butterfly park is also being planted by farmers to augment pollinators.

In the young plantations created as part of this project, wildlife is already finding shelter. There are nemali (peafowl), adavipandi (wild boar), kundelo (hares), jinka (deer), and nakka (foxes). Before the monsoon came, it was a long, back-breaking heatwave. We are in one of the plantations, standing among young pomegrenade and guava trees. Clumps of grasses hang from the trees. The farmers had put up bushels of rice for birds to feed on, and lined the bottoms of trees with water containers they still fill. It’s a little kindness for the wild animal at a time when everyone is feeling challenged by the weather.

Laxmalla chandraleela, 43, helps with plantations in Rukmapur. She has a special piece of advice. “If we can pluck fruit from a tree that can shelter a bird or animal, everyone wins,” she says. Many of the trees are too young to fruit at this point. But everyone is looking forward to the day the fruit of their labour will be in their hands.

The work done by the WWF and IKEA partnership, farmer producer companies, and farming communities demonstrates both strengthening of the local community and a sustained harvest of cotton and other crops. This model shows that it can be replicated in other cotton production landscapes–for people and pollinators both.

Read a summary of this story on panda.org here