Journey mapping challenges in working with small, marginal rainfed farmers

Executive Summary:

There are a number of challenges in Indian agriculture including degraded land, depleting water resources and falling farmer incomes . To address these challenges, government agencies, civil society organisations (CSOs), philanthropies and bilateral agencies are funding and implementing a number of projects. There are many success stories too; cases where natural resources have been restored, solving for land degradation and water scarcity, while improving farmer incomes.

These successful CSO interventions have not always scaled as they were intended to. Interventions that worked in one place have not worked in another context. Reasons for this include starting from scratch instead of learning from others, disinterest in learning from failures and taking a one-size-fits-all approach to solutions. There is a need to relook at the way CSOs identify problems and approach solutions. What is needed are diagnostic tools that could help communities arrive at the solution more efficiently by learning from others.

In this project, we have developed a framework that maps pain points experienced by CSOs as they implement interventions in the farming process. Using a design thinking approach, we conducted journey mapping exercises with CSOs to understand their implementation challenges. We worked with CSOs and farmer collectives in arid and semi-arid regions of the Deccan Plateau, choosing them based on socioeconomic and biophysical variables.

Through this process, we have collated specific farming process challenges and CSO intervention challenges. For these, we have provided potential actionable solutions that any stakeholder in the ecosystem could implement. We have also collated research questions that need to be answered before solutions can be arrived at. Further, we compiled a subset of solutions that involve digital tools and frameworks, and the creation of a knowledge commons that CSEI has the expertise to further.

At the end of this journey mapping exercise, we propose the development of a paper toolkit that can guide CSOs on solutions to some of these challenges. We will begin the development of the toolkit, and pilot it with these CSOs to understand how effective the toolkit is in overcoming the challenges we identified.

For the pain points that don’t have immediate solutions, we have identified a set of research questions that require additional research. We recommend the setting up of a research marketplace where we can provide the questions, for students, particularly masters and PhD candidates, interested in working on relevant and impactful research topics would benefit from this marketplace. This is a win-win for all parties involved, and could unlock key research insights for solutioning for CSOs.

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