“Punjab is both a model and a disaster.”-Surinder Singh, India Planning Commission Agriculture Advisor
Punjab, the land of 5 rivers, is home to bhangra, chicken tikka masala, and also to my family and ancestors. My father was born in Mari Udhoke, a village of 2,000 people in Punjab and spent most of his youth in Chandigarh, Punjab. His grandparents worked in farming before the Green Revolution, a time before hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides drastically increase the livelihoods of farmers in India.
Fast forward to last Wednesday, we met with Ajmer Dhatt, a professor at Punjab Agricultural University and from a farming family himself. Before the Green Revolution, families like my father’s could not dream of owning TVs and cars, yet Ajmer and his relatives have a beautiful family home, car, cell phones in Bhattian, a village of 2,000 people.
While the Green Revolution provided great benefits, chemical seeds and fertilizers have caused the overuse of pesticides. Today Indian soil requires four times the amount of fertilizer than 40 years ago and crop yields are dropping. The biggest issue in Punjab now is water. We saw deep ground wells and constantly pondered- How can business school students help?
Whether through clean water technologies or by improving supply chains to increase access to the market for value added products, the possibilities are immense.
This week the farmer research team ventures to Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, a state known for its progressive and sustainable methods of farming. We are meeting with the Center for Sustainable Agriculture, BASIX, Acumen Fund, and the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty in order to identify current solutions to this issue.
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