From pilot to practice: how biodiversity-based farming is taking root in rural India

A year ago, the Agricultural Transition to Productive Biodiversity project, implemented by MetaMeta and GOPA, set out to explore how nature-based solutions and local participation could restore biodiversity while maintaining agricultural livelihoods.

Three MetaMeta colleagues – Arpan Mondal, Pratik Ranjan and Shubham Jain – working in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal described how the project is now moving beyond the pilot stage. “We are approaching the final phase,” said Mondal. “Field-level interventions are ongoing, but the focus has shifted to scaling: how can these approaches be integrated into larger programmes and institutional frameworks?”

Building evidence

The team is now actively working to move beyond the pilot phase by engaging government departments, academic institutions and civil society organisations while simultaneously building a broader evidence base through interviews, videos, field data and documentation.

Three interventions in practice

Since the beginning, the project has centred around the same three interventions: ecological rodent management, the revival of field hedges, and water-efficient rice cultivation through alternate wetting and drying (AWD). But by now, these interventions feel less like components in a project plan and more like aspects that have begun to alter everyday realities.

Rodent management: from inevitability to control

One of the clearest examples comes from ecologically-based rodent management (EBRM).

“Last year,” said Pratik Ranjan, “when we asked farmers how to reduce losses caused by rodents, the common response was that such losses were unavoidable.”

That has changed. Farmers are now more aware of the scale of the problem and of the fact that losses can actually be managed.

According to the team, rodent-related losses in the project areas were previously around 15 to 20 percent. By April 2026, losses reduced substantially, in some cases to below 5 percent where the interventions are actively being implemented. Just as important as the numbers, however, is the change in behaviour.

Farmers are increasingly taking initiatives themselves. In several villages, community members began placing additional bird perches independently after seeing the results of the intervention.

“We trained them last year,” said Pratik Ranjan. “But now when we go to the fields, we see that they know how to do it, and are implementing it on their own.”

Hedges that generate income

The same applies to the project’s work on the revival of field hedges. These hedges are planted along field boundaries using species that can serve multiple purposes, combining ecological and economic benefits. The intervention looks simple, but it required careful negotiation. Farmers first had to be convinced that the boundaries of their fields – which had previously generated little or no value – could become productive. Then came the practical question: which species should be planted?

That question turned out to be crucial. The team needed plants that would survive local agro-climatic conditions and also produce visible benefits for farmers within a reasonable time. In some places, heavy rainfall damaged young plants. In winter, cold weather posed new risks. Adjustments had to be made continuously in response to local conditions and farmer feedback. But despite these setbacks, the hedges are beginning to demonstrate income potential for farmers alongside improvements in soil health, biodiversity, and ecological pest regulation. According to the team, some farmers have earned roughly 10,000 rupees from produce grown on field boundaries, while also benefiting from improved soil quality and biodiversity.

Water management and its limits

The third intervention, AWD, was also the one that most clearly revealed the importance of contextual suitability. AWD is a method of rice cultivation in which fields are not continuously flooded. Instead, irrigation alternates with dry periods, reducing water use and often improving soil and pest conditions. In principle, it is a promising climate-resilient practice. In practice, however, it depends on local topography and water control.

That became clear when the team tried to implement it in Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh. In those areas, sloping terrain and unpredictable rainfall meant that water drained away too quickly. Farmers could not control field conditions well enough for the method to work.

“We tried a lot with the community,” explained Arpan Kumar. “We invested time, but it proved difficult to operationalise under those field conditions.”

According to the team, one of the most important lessons from the project is that such interventions depend on clearly identifiable conditions. In the case of AWD, reliable irrigation access, flatter terrain and suitable cropping systems proved essential.

Adapting to local realities

That experience became an important lesson in adaptive implementation. Rather than treating the intervention as universally applicable, the project increasingly focused on understanding which ecological and agricultural conditions were needed in order for specific practices to realistically succeed.

In West Bengal, AWD is now being piloted more successfully.

Women as changemakers

The changes the team described are not limited to techniques. They also concern social dynamics, especially around women’s roles in farming. In many of the communities involved, women already do much of the agricultural work, but they are not always recognised as decision-makers. That is beginning to shift.

Women have played a central role in adopting the interventions, often through self-help groups that already function as important local networks. The project has used these groups not simply as channels for outreach, but as spaces where women can speak more freely, discuss farming decisions and take on practical responsibilities. In some cases, women farmers decided themselves to adopt hedges, EBRM or AWD and then convinced their family members to go along with it. The team was careful not to present the project as a gender-based intervention. However, because many of the participating farmers were women, the interventions indirectly strengthened women’s visibility, technical confidence and decision-making role within local agricultural systems.

“How can we recognise women as farmers in this society?” asked Arpan Mondal. In many regions, women carry out much of the hands-on agricultural labour – from planting and weeding to harvesting and processing – while formal decision-making and land ownership often remain concentrated with men.

Scaling beyond pilots

Another recurring theme was the question of scale. According to the team, this is because the problems addressed by the project – inefficient water use, biodiversity decline and rodent-related crop losses – are not limited to a single region, but occur across large parts of India and beyond.

The team appears cautiously optimistic, but remains realistic about the complexity of institutional adoption. Government uptake requires evidence, policy alignment and coordination across multiple levels. For that reason, the project is pursuing several routes simultaneously, including partnerships with universities, local authorities and civil society organisations.

Bringing knowledge into institutions

Academic institutions have emerged as a particularly interesting route. The team has begun speaking to agricultural universities and other social institutions about including topics such as EBRM and field hedges in courses. That matters because some of the issues the project addresses – especially rodent damage – are still not discussed enough in formal agricultural education.

“People are not talking about these things,” said Shubham Jain. “So how can we add them to courses?”

Transferability and broader relevance

This effort to embed the work in training and policy reflects a broader confidence that the interventions are transferable. EBRM, for instance, is relevant far beyond the current project areas, since rodent losses are a national issue. The team also pointed out that elements of the project resonate with initiatives in other countries. Hedges are already part of discussions elsewhere, sometimes with different goals such as carbon sequestration or biodiversity. EBRM-related work has appeared in countries such as Vietnam, Lebanon and Ethiopia. AWD, too, may be applicable in other contexts where rice production and water scarcity intersect.

Lessons beyond India

In India, the interventions are tied closely to livelihoods and smallholder survival. In Europe, similar practices might be adopted more explicitly in the context of climate goals, green transitions or food security. The local purpose may change, but the ecological principles remain similar. According to the team, the interventions rely on identifiable conditions – such as water availability, land structure or existing farming systems – that can help determine where particular approaches are most likely to succeed.

Personal takeaways

One of the moments that really stayed with the team came when farmers began continuing interventions independently. In one case, women farmers in Jharkhand organised rodent management activities themselves after noticing rodents returning to the fields – without waiting for instructions from the project team.

“It was very rewarding to see,” Meghna Mukherjee, Programme Manager at MetaMeta Research, reflected. “At that point it stopped feeling like something external being introduced to communities. People had started taking ownership themselves.”

Other lessons emerged more gradually. In communities where household incomes can remain very modest, even relatively small gains from hedges or reduced crop losses proved meaningful for families. And for the team working on AWD, the experience in Madhya Pradesh clarified that success depended less on the idea itself than on whether local conditions – such as irrigation access and cropping patterns – actually allowed the intervention to work.

Looking ahead

Taken together, their reflections suggest a project that has become more grounded as it has progressed. What began as a biodiversity initiative now appears equally concerned with trust, adaptation and recognition.

The project may be nearing its formal conclusion. But if the field teams are right, its most important phase may just be beginning: the gradual transition from isolated field interventions towards a broader systemic change in how agriculture, biodiversity and rural livelihoods are understood and managed. At the same time, the project is generating practical knowledge about the conditions under which biodiversity-based interventions can be replicated elsewhere.