Equity Deficits in Climate Resilient Agriculture: Pathways Beyond Maladaptation
By: Forums Team 25/26
This forum invited us to look beyond our local food system and reflect on how global agricultural policies shape food security, equity, and resilience. Our discussion focused on India’s experience fifty years after the Green Revolution, using rice agriculture to examine how scientific innovation interacts with social, cultural, and political realities.
The Green Revolution is often celebrated as a technological success with new seed varieties, fertilizers, and irrigation methods that dramatically increased yields and helped prevent famine. Today, that legacy continues through climate-resilient crops, including flood-tolerant rice designed to withstand increasingly unpredictable weather. The narrative is familiar: science and technology as solutions to climate change and food insecurity. However, the forum challenged us to look past intention and examine impact. Fieldwork conducted across four regions in India, Mahabubnagar, Mandya, Tumkuru, and Aurangabad, assessed a government-backed agricultural initiative valued at roughly $500 million. While the project aimed to increase yields, improve incomes, and reduce water use, its real-world outcomes revealed significant gaps between design and lived experience.
In Mahabubnagar District, farmers were encouraged to adopt the System of Rice Intensification. This method promoted higher yields using less water through precise spacing, controlled irrigation, and mechanical weeders. When researchers returned after government officials had left, farmers reported modest yield increases of five to ten percent. Despite this, most said they would not continue using the system.
The first issue with the method was that it was highly labour-intensive and relied heavily on women’s work. It required extremely narrow planting windows that left little room for error, increasing stress and risk. Mechanization shifted tasks traditionally done by women to men, creating resentment and resistance from men. Water access also became a major barrier as the system depended on intermittent irrigation from wells powered by unreliable electricity, a risk that only wealthier farmers with multiple wells could afford to take.
These challenges were largely unanticipated by project designers, and while yield and efficiency were carefully measured, social and cultural dynamics were underexplored. Farmers were treated as a homogenous group, despite clear differences in wealth, power, and vulnerability. As a result, benefits were unevenly distributed, with larger and more affluent farmers better positioned to succeed.
A key theme throughout the forum was the danger of sidelining equity. Local knowledge was often collected but later ignored, and farmers who were consulted during research stages found their perspectives excluded from final implementation. In development contexts where funding, professional reputation, and future projects depend on demonstrating success, there is little incentive to acknowledge failure or complexity. Rather than offering simple solutions, the forum emphasized the need for reflexive and ongoing approaches to agricultural adaptation. Drawing on principles of transformative adaptation, it highlighted the importance of centring rights and justice, acknowledging power relations, recognizing unintended outcomes, and building long-term, community-based partnerships.
Ultimately, the forum raised a critical question: who defines success? A solution that works scientifically may not align with the priorities, capacities, or realities of the people expected to adopt it. Without sustained dialogue and cultural sensitivity, even well-intentioned interventions risk falling short.
Thank you to Dr. Marcus Taylor for sharing his research, insights, and reflections with us. His work offered a powerful reminder that sustainable food systems require not only innovation but also humility, listening, and long-term engagement.