It is no surprise that rural farmer groups like the Pan Bari Farmers club in Changlang District of Arunachal Pradesh are already adapting to climate change. With the current pattern of erratic rainfall, fluctuating temperatures, and the emergence of new pests and diseases in Dharmapur II village, growing seasonal crops and yield are severely challenged. For Pan Bari Farmers club and millions of smallholder farmers, now it is more than ever important to integrate climate change adaptation within agriculture for food security.

Seva Kendra Arunachal East (SKAE), the Caritas India partner under the FARM Northeast program on food and nutrition security has made climate change adaptation as a cross-cutting issue in the programme. SKAE has created awareness of climate change and the climate-adaptive model in the targeted farming community from the month of March 2022. 

For food growers, sustainability depends on climate adaptation tools and practices which can help in addressing the current threats and managing the risk and uncertainty associated with climate. Concerned with the imminent dangers of climate change, the farmers from Pan Bari Farmers club have started to take necessary actions to enhance their crop production. This farmer group started practising Climate adaptation using trellis on their land. This form of practice saves space, grows more crops and also reduces the risk of diseases and pests.

This climate-adaptive practice has turned out to be a popular intervention in the region which allow the growing of paddy along with other food crops in the backyard gardens. Such models are a replication of the shifting cultivation which is a live example of crop diversification. Shifting is severely challenged due to climate change and is considered to be non-sustainable in many parts of the region including the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. However, replication of the diversified systems like shifting cultivation caters to the food security of the smallholders and also allows them to stick to the age-old patterns of agricultural systems. 

The cultivation was planned on the ground and on trellis simultaneously to get more in the same season. The farmers used 1½ bigha (0.68 Acres) of land to start this climate-adaptive practice in the month of May 2022. The crops grown on the more than 5 trellises include pumpkin, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, ash gourd, and cucumber whereas paddy, chilli, okra, taro, maize and local coriander were cultivated on land. Thirty members of the farmer club work 4 days in groups for the preparation of field ploughing, levelling, sowing of seeds and setting up trellises. 

“We invested Rs. 30,000 to set up the Bamboo trellises and collected the indigenous seeds from each member,” said Sontosh Chakma, Secretary of Pan Bari FC. The farmers started selling their produce in the local market twice in a week to earn approx. Rs. 1,500 every time. The crops are not fully harvested and by the final harvest, farmers are expecting to earn around Rs. 70,000 or more from their surplus crop production from their practice. Farmers are now looking forward to adding more crops and fruit trees to get more diversified produce. At the individual level, they want to pursue this climate-adaptive practice in their own land to get optimum results.

Other Farmers are also motivated by the Pan Bari Farmer’s work and their awareness towards climate change. Two more farmers clubs from Dharmapur have also started setting up the climate adaptive models. The SKAE team is providing handholding support to the farmers and continues to promote the climate adaptive model and practices in the targeted villages.

“Being someone belonging to the ethnic community, I find this climate-adaptive model as one of the possible ways to ensure food security of the smallholders in my programme area,” said Mintu Moshahary, Coordinator, FARM.