Farm Typology in the Berambadi Watershed (India): Farming Systems Are Determined by Farm Size and Access to Groundwater

Marion Robert,Magali Willaume,Delphine Leenhardt,Shrinivas Badiger,Jacques-Eric Bergez,Alban Thomas,Laurent Ruiz,Muddu Sekhar

doi:10.3390/w9010051

Abstract

Farmers’ production decisions and agricultural practices directly and indirectly influence the quantity and quality of natural resources, some being depleted common resources such as groundwater. Representing farming systems while accounting for their flexibility is needed to evaluate targeted, regional water management policies. Farmers’ decisions regarding investing in irrigation and adopting cropping systems are inherently dynamic and must adapt to changes in climate and agronomic, economic and social, and institutional, conditions. To represent this diversity, we developed a typology of Indian farmers from a survey of 684 farms in Berambadi, an agricultural watershed in southern India (state of Karnataka). The survey provided information on farm structure, the cropping system and farm practices, water management for irrigation, and economic performances of the farm. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis (Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering) were used to analyze relationships between observed factors and establish the farm typology. We identified three main types of farms: (1) large diversified and productivist farms; (2) small and marginal rainfed farms, and (3) small irrigated marketing farms. This typology represents the heterogeneity of farms in the Berambadi watershed.

Highlights

In semi-arid regions, agricultural production systems depend greatly on irrigation and encounter increasing challenges: growing uncertainty about how to respond to climate change, severe depletion of natural resources, high volatility in market prices, rises in energy costs, greater pressure from public regulations, and conflicts about sharing communal water resources [1]
Typologies are a convenient tool to simplify the diversity of farming systems while effectively describing their heterogeneity [8,9,10]
A statistically higher percentage of farmers grow cash crops during rabi in the Beemanabeedu gram panchayat villages, where more than 50% earn more than 12,500 Rs/hectare during rabi, vs. less than 30% in the Berambadi gram panchayat villages

Summary

Introduction

In semi-arid regions, agricultural production systems depend greatly on irrigation and encounter increasing challenges: growing uncertainty about how to respond to climate change, severe depletion of natural resources, high volatility in market prices, rises in energy costs, greater pressure from public regulations (agricultural, environmental, and health policies), and conflicts about sharing communal water resources [1]. Modeling farming systems at regional scale is a relevant approach to assess “ex-ante” targeted water management policies [3,4]. As modeling all individual farms within a region is usually not feasible, such approaches requires building a farm typology [5] representing in a simplified way the existing diversity of farming systems while accounting to the possible differential response of farm types to management policies. A typology is an artificial way to define different homogeneous groups, categories or types based on specific criteria in order to organize reality from a viewpoint relevant to the objectives of the model [6,7,8]. Typologies are a convenient tool to simplify the diversity of farming systems while effectively describing their heterogeneity [8,9,10]. Since farm types are adapted to local restrictions such as resource availability, it is necessary to identify their spatial distribution or location factors [11]

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion