Deep Roots

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ventions to tackle frequently occurring droughts affecting

dryland agriculture since 1970. ICRISAT and its part-

ners developed Vertisol management technology using a

watershed management approach in 1976 and took it for

on-farm demonstrations during the 1990s but, although

economically remunerative, the technologies weren’t

adopted by farmers. Based on the lessons learned from

different evaluation studies of conventional watershed

management programmes in India, in 1998 an integrated

farmer-centric watershed model adopting an Integrated

Genetic and Natural Resource Management (IGNRM)

approach was developed and piloted to address tangi-

ble economic benefits to smallholders, ownership of the

interventions, women’s involvement, enhancing collective

action, and technical backstopping ensuring knowledge

sharing.

ICRISAT later adopted the Inclusive Market

Oriented Development (IMOD) strategy to link small

farmers to markets and ensure profits through innovative

collective action using new information and communica-

tion technologies. The IGNRM and IMOD pillars harnessed

the potential of crops, livestock, poultry, fisheries, trees

and value-adding microenterprises, linked production and

markets to benefit smallholders and transformed their lives

through an integrated approach.

Many partners are engaged with farmers and co-invest

their knowledge, technologies and practices to address key

constraints that farmers face as suppliers. This initiative was

initially supported by the Asian Development Bank for pilots

in India, Thailand, Viet Nam and China. Later, development

investors such as the Indian Ministry of Rural Development,

the World Bank through the Sujala Watershed Program in

Karnataka, the Department for International Development

through the Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Program, the

Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust supported

further refinements and scaling-up in India.

Identifying a suitable entry point activity (EPA) for

promoting collective action and gaining the trust of the

community is critically important. The EPA must be

knowledge-based rather than cash-based to benefit large

numbers of community members. Based on close study of

the constraints, suitable EPAs were identified for increasing

productivity quickly, as in Adarsha watershed, Kothapally

in India, or addressing a major common need such as

drinking water in Lucheba watershed in China.

Adarsha watershed, India

In 1998/99 Kothapally village in the Shankarpally mandal

of Ranga Reddy district in Telangana (previously Andhra

Pradesh) was a village with little development and no

transport facilities. Eighty per cent of its 462 hectares of

agricultural land was rain-fed, growing one crop per year.

The main crops were cotton, maize, sorghum and pigeon-

pea with 1-1.5 t ha

-1

productivity of sorghum and maize

and 200 kg ha

-1

of pigeonpea. All the 62 open wells were

dry from January onwards and village women had to travel

2-3 km to fetch drinking water from February until the

June-July monsoon rains. Milk production was low and

there was little surplus milk to sell. Smallholders were

migrating to the city for livelihood during the off season.

In 1999, at the request of the district administrator

and the government Drought Prone Area Programme,

the ICRISAT team selected Kothapally for drought-proof-

ing with improved technologies based on the severity

of water scarcity, large rain-fed area, low crop yields,

poverty and the willingness of the community to work

together. ICRISAT brought the partners together with the

Government of Andhra Pradesh, MV Foundation (a non-

governmental organization operating in the district), the

Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture and the

National Remote Sensing Agency in a consortium.

Open wells in Kothapally before watershed scenario and after, with recharge pits

Images: ICRISAT

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