International Journal of Rural Management

This article situates Indian agriculture within the growing field of sustainability transitions, a literature that has largely neglected agriculture in the Global South. We argue that India’s Green Revolution model, characterised by high external inputs, water-intensive crops and technocratic extension, has reached ecological, economic and epistemic limits. Dominant policy responses organised around “productivity and populism” have prioritised short-term farm incomes but deepened long-term vulnerability through soil degradation, groundwater depletion and input dependency. Drawing on recent Indian scholarship and practitioner experience, we conceptualise agricultural transitions not as technological substitutions but as a socially negotiated processes shaped by power, knowledge and institutions. We argue for research that connects agroecology with sustainability-transitions thinking, highlighting the role of civil society, farmer organisations and public institutions in co-producing alternative pathways. We identify key challenges and opportunities for scaling agroecological transitions in India from the five papers in this special issue. We conclude by outlining a research agenda focused on landscape-level change, epistemic justice and metrics that move beyond productivity to include soil health, biodiversity, water and labour, thereby enabling more just and resilient smallholder food systems.

Recent literature has positioned agroecological transitions as a way of repairing the ‘metabolic and epistemic rift’ brought about by industrial agriculture. Deeper appreciation of the interconnectedness and interpenetration between humans and nature has been at the heart of much thought about agroecology. Social and epistemic justice have been incorporated as almost inherent to the definition of agroecology for many involved in theorising about it worldwide, especially thought coming out of Latin America on ‘emancipatory agroecologies’. In view of the historical inequalities in agriculture in Malwa-Nimar, India, along caste, gender and class lines, this research seeks to explore the extent to which agroecology as currently practiced is emancipatory, and what challenges exist to overcoming structural inequalities. Findings show that, while more privileged farmers are able to find ways to repair the metabolic and position themselves as agents of epistemic change, sustaining their agroecological practice within current economic structures makes them dependent on relationships with labour and networks that may reify historical social and epistemic inequalities. This points to a need to embed the agroecology movement in a larger process of systems change in the region that seeks social-justice-centred rural transformation.

The scholarship on sustainability transitions has surprisingly few studies on agriculture and food systems, especially from emerging economies such as India. The role of firms and businesses, especially cooperatives and producer organisations in agri-food systems transitions, has not been explored as much. Over the past decade, many Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been formed, primarily focused on facilitating the supply of agro-chemical inputs, while offering limited support to farmers in transitioning towards ecologically sustainable agricultural practices. This study looks at four case studies FPOs from across geographies in India, providing an opportunity to look at these FPOs as intermediaries of sustainable transitions and how they situate themselves in the agricultural ecosystem that has mainstream market actors as well as FPOs that are not engaged in sustainable agriculture. Additionally, to understand the intermediary role of FPOs, it is essential to examine how key actors—such as civil society organizations, financial institutions, marketing partners, and government agencies—contribute to and influence the intermediary role of FPOs in sustainable transition. These FPOs that are engaged in and promote sustainable agricultural practices bring out their strong potential transition intermediaries of the future.

Civil society has a critical role in bringing about the paradigm shift necessary for sustainability transitions in agriculture. It forms the backbone behind both scaling out and scaling up of these transitions. Its role as innovator, pioneer, campaigner, collaborator and co-creator of knowledge has been inadequately studied in the social movements, sustainability transitions and agroecology literature. This article traces the organic evolution of civil society action in India from the 1980s that reflects a rich and plural history, including a radical and early critique of the Green Revolution paradigm, rooting locally situated alternatives on farmers’ fields and co-creating a diverse set of concepts and practices based on principles from the emerging science of agroecology coupled with socio-economic concerns. As the Indian state aims to rapidly scale natural farming, there is a need for exploring more common ground beyond noisy contestations on terminology or treating civil society organisations (CSOs) as sub-contractors of government schemes. CSOs need to experiment with emerging large-scale opportunities by maintaining a delicate balance between being co-opted collaborators or reluctant partners. As a social movement, they should not lose sight of their recognition and ability to be voices for marginalised knowledge systems, innovators of alternatives and watchdogs of collective value-based action.

Are sustainable transitions in agriculture necessarily women-friendly, or can they also increase gender imbalance? The mutual shaping of gender relations and technologies is an area that has been inadequately studied by sustainability transition scholars. This article investigates how the introduction of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) affected gender roles in rice cultivation, focusing on weeding practices in three villages in Odisha, India. The introduction of mechanical weeders under SRI led to complex shifts in labour divisions in weeding, traditionally women’s work. Deep-rooted gender relations hindered the reworking of wage and employment norms for men and women involved in weeding. Mechanical weeding did not shift women’s labour uniformly to men’s, while instances of women using mechanical weeders varied across villages, seasons and models. Technology was shaped locally by environmental conditions, sociocultural norms, weeder models, extension institutions and negotiations involving the agency of women. Sustainable transitions in agriculture are not gender-neutral, and they must be carefully integrated to avoid reinforcing existing disparities. The study provides insights into the need to invest in collective experimentation for longer-term societal transformations.

A comprehensive baseline survey of 1,776 farmers was conducted under a programme to scale up natural farming practices across 11 agro-ecological zones in Madhya Pradesh. This provided a unique opportunity to study farms at different stages of transition, including chemical, non-pesticide management (NPM) and organic farms. Unlike previous comparative studies that focus on monocropping, we adopt a methodology for assessing multi-cropping system, which is a key feature of natural farming. Fresh insights reveal that at certain levels of organic input use, the aggregate yield of organic farms matches or exceeds that of chemical farms. However, most organic farms apply inputs below this range. A significant portion of chemical farms’ net income is attributable to fertiliser subsidies, and when this subsidy is deducted, organic farms often have a higher net income. Further, the study highlights that the adoption of natural farming is not a simple binary choice but rather a gradient shaped by the level of agro-ecological practice adoption and organic input application, both of which directly influence farm performance. Although standardisation is not encouraged in natural farming, our findings suggest that setting benchmarks for input quantities and composition could establish useful adoption thresholds, aiding farmers in their transition to natural farming.