Water and seeds

Water is essential: without it, crops cannot grow. How much water a place has decides how farming is done there.

Rain-fed farming depends completely on rain. These farmers face droughts and unpredictable monsoons. To cope, they choose crops that survive dry spells, and use traditional ways of harvesting (collecting and storing) rainwater.

Irrigated farming brings water to crops by other means, so farmers depend less on the monsoon and can grow more. India's irrigation history is very long — water structures have been built since the Indus (Harappan) civilisation.

India has many words for its traditional water structures: kull, kund, ahar, pokhar, khadin, arakere, koḷam, surangam, taḍāgam and eri, to name a few. A language makes words for the things that matter to it.

Some traditional systems:

• Phad — community irrigation in Maharashtra, using small canals to bring river water to fields.
• Bamboo drip irrigation — in parts of northeastern India, bamboo pipes carry water from springs to the fields.
• Kallanai — the great dam across the Kaveri built by the Chola king Karikāla, still watering fields after about 1,800 years.

Modern methods:

• Drip (trickle) irrigation — water goes slowly and directly to each plant's roots through tubes, so very little is wasted.
• Sprinkler irrigation — water is sprayed into the air and falls on the crops like rain.

Saving water matters more and more, because in many parts of India groundwater is running out fast. (The Munsar Lake at Viramgam, Gujarat, is a man-made lake built by Queen Minaldevi of the Chaulukya dynasty in the 11th century CE; small shrines line its banks, a reminder that water bodies were treated as sacred.)

Now seeds. Traditionally, families saved their best seeds from each harvest to sow next year, kept them in the community and shared them; in some areas women even carried seeds to their new home after marriage. ICAR (the Indian Council of Agricultural Research) has revived beejamrit, a paste of cow dung and urine mixed with other things, used to coat seeds so they don't spoil and sprout faster. And the Indian seed drill, an ancient invention, prepared the soil, planted the seed and closed the furrow in one go.

Today, many farmers buy seeds from companies. These are developed for higher yields and pest resistance. But often the seeds from those plants cannot be sown again next season, so the farmer has to buy new seed every year. Critics say this makes farmers dependent on seed companies.