Rayees Ahmad Kumar
As the shadows of climate change become increasingly evident across the globe, water scarcity for both human consumption and agricultural practices has emerged as a pressing concern. In this context, it is of paramount importance to prioritise agricultural practices and crops that can withstand drought conditions while producing higher yields. Such climate-resilient practices can play a vital role in ensuring food security and sustainable agricultural development in the face of changing climatic conditions.
A day before, on DD Kashir Srinagar’s Jahanbeen programme, I had the opportunity to watch an informative and insightful podcast hosted by renowned television host Fayaz Ahmad Fayaz, with Dr. Tawseef Mairaj Shah as the guest.
The discussion featured a series of thought-provoking questions related to Kashmir’s agricultural sector and the challenges it is facing amid the growing threat of climate change and increasing water scarcity. The conversation offered valuable insights into the changing agricultural landscape of Kashmir and highlighted the urgent need to adopt sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural practices to safeguard the livelihood of farmers and ensure food security in the region.
Hailing from Lelhar Kakpora village of Pulwama district, Dr Tawseef Mairaj Shah is a food systems researcher and an impact entrepreneur. Tawseef is a trained environmental process engineer with a doctorate in agroecology from the Hamburg University of Technology (TU Hamburg). He is the COO and Co-Founder of the Berlin-based startup CinSOIL, which is developing a software tool to enable sustainable decarbonisation pathways in the agrifood sector through insetting. He did his bachelors in process engineering from the National Institute of Technology Srinagar (NIT Srinagar) and masters from TU Hamburg. Tavseef’s research interests include agrifood systems transformation, agroecology, food, soil and water security, biodiverse farming systems, and technology enhanced ecological systems.
During the podcast, Dr Tawseef Mairaj Shah shared an interesting observation from his early understanding of agriculture. Although he had seen people engaged in farming, he himself had never actively participated in agricultural practices. This experience eventually helped him understand a basic yet important fact—that rice comes from the soil.
The discussion further brought to light that, at the global level, nearly 80 per cent of available water is used for agriculture. Although Kashmir is blessed with considerable water resources, groundwater levels are continuously declining, while water from various sources is also becoming polluted. The excessive and indiscriminate use of agrochemicals is one of the major factors contributing to water pollution.
According to Dr Tawseef, there is, therefore, an urgent need to shift towards research-based and technology-driven farming practices. Modern technology and scientific research have created considerable potential for producing crops while using significantly less water. He also recalled that in 2019, the Department of Irrigation and Flood Control, in coordination with the Department of Agriculture, had advised farmers not to cultivate rice because of water shortages. That warning should have been taken as a wake-up call. The situation now demands that we think rationally, adopt scientific approaches and take timely measures to ensure the sustainability of agriculture and our precious water resources.
Speaking about the concept of I-Rice, Dr Tawseef said that the devastating floods of 2014 encouraged him to explore sustainable agricultural practices that could consume less water without compromising the quality and quantity of the crop. This led him to develop the I-Rice module. I-Rice is a non-traditional method of rice cultivation in which a single seedling is planted instead of a bunch of seedlings. Wider spaces are maintained between the plants, while water is supplied only once a week. He experimented with the I-Rice module with five to six farmers in Sagam village of Kokernag in Anantnag district. In some fields, wider spaces were maintained between rice seedlings and beans were sown in the intervening spaces, while in other fields rice seedlings were planted without leaving such spaces. The experiments revealed that the fields with wider spacing produced better and more desirable results, while also enabling farmers to obtain a second crop.
According to Dr. Tawseef, diseases such as rice blast have not been observed in fields where the method has been adopted. It helps conserve nearly 50 per cent of water, allows farmers to raise a second crop, reduces the use of agrochemicals, and, importantly, produces a very high yield.
Responding to a question about soil health, Dr Tawseef said that soil is the second most important natural resource, with nearly 98 per cent of the world’s food being obtained from it. However, soil health is increasingly under threat due to salinization, a process in which excessive salts accumulate in the soil. He cautioned that this gradual accumulation of salts can severely degrade soil quality and eventually turn this living natural resource into an unproductive or “dead” resource.
Regarding the growing trend of high-density apple orchards, Dr Tawseef said that the reduced spacing between plants tends to create conditions conducive to the frequent spread of microbes and pathogens, compelling orchardists to rely more heavily on pesticides and other agrochemicals. He observed that Kashmir’s climatic conditions may not be ideally suited to such practices and stressed that the issue needs to be examined and discussed at the expert level before promoting high-density plantation systems on a wider scale.
Healthy soils have a greater capacity to retain water and absorb essential nutrients, thereby supporting healthy crop growth. However, when water remains in the soil for prolonged periods without being adequately absorbed, contaminants can leach into the food chain. Studies and reports from regions such as Punjab and Bangladesh have highlighted the presence of arsenic in soil and groundwater which is highly toxic and is also classified as a carcinogenic substance, posing serious risks to human health.
When asked about the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in water management, Dr. Tawseef remarked that AI may not be the ultimate solution, but it can certainly help in identifying and developing sustainable, long-term solutions.
Speaking about the younger generation, he observed that students today have access to facilities and resources that were not available to previous generations. With the internet, YouTube and numerous other informative platforms at their fingertips, young people have unprecedented opportunities to acquire knowledge and explore new areas of research.
Overall, the podcast proved to be a vibrant, insightful and informative programme, bringing several important aspects of agriculture, water management and sustainability to the fore. For this valuable initiative, both Doordarshan Kendra (DDK) Srinagar and the host, Fayaz Ahmad Fayaz, deserve appreciation and commendation.
(The author is a freelancer. He hails from Qazigund and can be reached at [email protected])
