How Smallholder Farmers in Uttarakhand Reworked the System of Rice Intensification: Innovations from Sociotechnical Interactions in Fields and Villages

Abstract

How Smallholder Farmers in Uttarakhand Reworked the System of Rice Intensification: Innovations from Sociotechnical Interactions in Fields and VillagesThe System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is presented in Asia and other parts of the world as an alternative 'agro-ecological' and 'farm-based' innovation in rice production. SRI calls for modifications in crop-management practices without relying on external inputs, which makes it different from innovations based on new rice varieties, which became dominant since the Green Revolution. SRI practices are therefore said to be appropriate for resource-poor smallholder farmers.Previous studies on SRI have focused mainly on the yield effects in comparison with other crop management practices, overall costs and benefits of SRI or deviations from recommended practices. These studies have largely neglected farmers' underlying strategies. This thesis provides an understanding of whether and how SRI can be called a 'farm-based' innovation. Rather than returning to earlier debates about SRI's adoption and disadoption, the study looks as how farm households and communities in Western Himalayan region of India responded to the introduction of SRI.The main objective of this research was to understand how farmers respond to an intervention like SRI and what this tells us about SRI as a socio-technical system. The main research question addressed by this thesis is how SRI, conceived as a set of practices introduced from outside the communities, was incorporated into the local rice farming system. Specifically, the thesis examines how existing work groups were adjusted to accommodate the new method, how the SRI practices were interpreted and adjusted to fit with the local social and agro-ecological arrangements, and how the new method influenced existing rice farming practices in the locality.The research was carried out in three contrasting villages of Uttarakhand, located in the Bhilangana sub-basin of the Western Himalayan region of India. SRI was introduced in this area in 2008. Fieldwork in the three villages was conducted throughout two rice seasons.The theoretical resources drawn upon for this research include the concept of "sociotechnical system", "agriculture as performance", and the culture of "task groups". Together these concepts help to understand rice farming as a collective and mutually shaping social and technical performance rather than the activity of an individual farmer. The thesis shows how existing and new rice farming practices and task groups are reconfigured through socio-technical innovations within a given agroecological setting. SRI acted as a catalyst, initiating a process of readjustments in the socio-technical configurations of rice farming, varying according to the local context. Farm households, while incorporating SRI into the existing farming system, try to ii seek complementarity and synergy between various rice farming methods. This allows fluidity among task groups and leads to the extension and diversification of the repertoire of m...

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