When farmer Malho Marndi first adopted new, mechanised planting practices on half of her sixteen-hectare farm in Odisha, the opposite villagers known as her “mad”, maybe involved in regards to the doubtlessly destructive impacts it will have on her operational prices and yield. Marndi‘s quick adoption of new agricultural innovations, including seed drills that mechanically transplant crops such as rice, maize and wheat, instead had the opposite effect, turning her into a model farmer that others now emulate.

This is because she was part of a new project run by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which helped introduce farmers like her to new planting practices combined with improved crop varieties. Farmers can use a machine to plant rice seeds using mechanical drills rather than the traditional method of growing seedlings in a nursery and then hand transplanting them into flooded fields.

During the 2022 kharif or “monsoon” season, Marndi harvested a yield of 5.6 and 6.4 tons per hectare from planting Arize 6129 and Arize 6444 Gold, respectively. This is far higher than the average 3.7 tons per hectare attained in the country on average.

Innovations like this will be essential to keeping the agricultural sectors of the world’s breadbasket international locations outfitted to feed a rising inhabitants sooner or later. India, as an illustration, is the world’s largest producer and exporter of cereal merchandise, which incorporates rice, maize and millet. Other improvements embody breeding programmes designed to increase rice’s nutritional profile, integrating fish production within flooded rice fields to spice up incomes and vitamin whereas supporting biodiversity, and alternate wet-dry cultivation, which may dramatically minimize between 30 to 70 percent of the rice sector’s greenhouse fuel emissions with out decreasing yield.

As the G20 Agriculture Ministerial assembly is presently underway in Hyderabad, they’re tasked with help additional progress and collaboration in world meals worth chains. Innovation can be key in unlocking the positive factors they search, nevertheless it doesn’t – certainly, should not – give attention to increased productiveness alone. It additionally has the potential to raised handle the agricultural sector’s use of finite pure sources like water and soil and to streamline the cultivation course of, particularly by means of entry to extra digital instruments. This final aim can be key to attracting extra younger individuals and girls into searching for alternatives working within the agri-food sector.

For Marndi, the case for innovation was a easy one. Not solely does the brand new direct-seeding approach require her to make use of much less water, it additionally saves her the time, prices and back-breaking drudgery of hand transplanting. It additionally makes bringing beforehand fallow land, which is commonly depleted of vitamins, again into cultivation simpler. And though the direct seeding course of requires much less labour for the planting course of, she is ready to make use of staff to assist with weed administration and post-production actions akin to harvesting, storage threshing and packaging. She plans to develop this follow throughout the opposite half of her farm within the 2023 kharif season and hopes that extra farmers like her can entry the hands-on coaching and instruments wanted to beat their threat aversion. This is particularly essential for feminine farmers, who would disproportionately profit from publicity visits, technical help and selective demonstrations.

Advances like this might assist India enhance not solely its productiveness but in addition its advances in direction of the empowerment of ladies. It additionally exhibits how 21^st-century improvements have the potential to generate the additional meals we’d like for a rising inhabitants, in a extra sustainable and equitable method.

The creator is Regional Director, South Asia, CGIAR. Views expressed are private.