Agricultural intensification and risk in water-constrained hard-rock regions: a social-ecological systems study of horticulture cultivation in western India
Agricultural intensification and risk in water-constrained hard-rock regions: a social-ecological systems study of horticulture cultivation in western India
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缺水硬岩地区的农业集约化和风险：印度西部园艺种植的社会生态系统研究
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发表时间：
2020
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
M. Sohoni
中科院分区：
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作者：
P. Prasad;M. Sohoni
发展中国家经常发现，它们的减贫举措与促进可持续做法不一致。在印度，通过园艺种植实现农业集约化也是政府提高农业收入的一项重要战略，但其机制和影响尚未得到批判性分析。我们的目标是描述这种集约化的特点，并探索其目标可能实现的条件，同时确保公平获得生态服务和社会生态系统（SES）的恢复力。我们关注的SES是印度西部的水资源受限的农场系统，覆盖了印度半岛常见的浅硬岩含水层。我们记录了121名农民连续两年的农业决策和应对策略：干旱年和降雨量好的年份。我们发现，农民被驱使到高价值的园艺，以保持经济上可行的社会生态脆弱性，由于季风变化，高地下水开发和灌溉接入的不确定性等因素。通过系统建模，我们揭示了传播风险的反馈回路。部分由于季风干旱造成的用水风险，启动了一个昂贵投资的循环，往往需要大笔贷款来确保用水，同时又转向园艺，以应对水的成本上升。这在短期内减轻了农民的风险，但在缺乏监管和关于共同地下水池的完整信息的情况下，导致竞争性投资，使整个社区的制度更加不确定。这种投资和集约化的恶性循环加剧了风险，导致频繁的作物歉收、农民负债和公地悲剧。政府干预进一步催化了这一点。我们提出了替代杠杆点，以提高社会对风险的理解，并促进集体行动，以便在生物物理边界内为人类需求提供谈判空间。
Developing countries frequently find their poverty reduction initiatives to be at odds with promotion of sustainable practices. In India too, agricultural intensification through horticulture cultivation is an important government strategy to raise farm incomes but its mechanisms and implications have not been critically analyzed. Our objective is to characterize this intensification and explore conditions under which its goals may be achieved while ensuring equity in access to ecological services and resilience of the social-ecological system (SES). Our focal SES is the water-constrained farm system of western India that overlays shallow hard-rock aquifers common to the Indian peninsula. We document farm decisions and coping strategies of 121 farmers over two consecutive years: a drought year and a good rainfall year. We find that farmers are driven to high-value horticulture to remain economically viable in the face of increasing social-ecological vulnerability due to factors such as monsoon variability, high groundwater development, and uncertainty in irrigation access. Through systems modeling, we uncover the feedback loops that propagate risk. Risk in access to water, in part due to monsoon dry spells, starts a cycle of expensive investments often requiring large loans to assure access and a simultaneous move to horticulture in response to the elevated cost of water. This mitigates risk for the farmer in the short run but, in the absence of regulation and complete information about the common groundwater pool, leads to competitive investments, driving the regime to greater uncertainty levels for the entire community. This vicious cycle of investment and intensification escalates risk, leading to frequent crop failure, farmer indebtedness, and the tragedy of the commons. Government interventions further catalyze this. We propose alternate leverage points to enhance social comprehension of risk and facilitate collective action so as to negotiate room for human needs while remaining within biophysical boundaries.