HAFED, a Historical Perspective on Change Agents in India
HAFED, or The Haryana State Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation Limited, began as a grassroots initiative by the farmers in the Haryana State of India who banded together to create a place-based cooperative where they could sort, manage, and sell their produce. The organization grew over the years as more pieces of the supply chain were added. They purchased inputs like fertilizer and seeds and resold them to other farmers creating a retail section of the co-op, and added processing mills, marketing agents, and storage and transportation agencies, all the while the co-op grew in influence and power. While the HAFED does not only work within the rice production system, they do specialize in it. They have multiple rice mills and specialized marketing schemes just for rice and work with farmers to track yields of different varieties.
HAFED is a change agent because they took a small group of farmers and turned them into a large agency that can effect change at a state level (in effect they took the farmer and made him international). This network anchoring allows the farmers to exert influence over the market. HAFED’s growth into a large player within the market also allowed it to become institutionally anchored by working with the government to create and maintain policies that influence what farmers buy and where the inputs come from.
The transformations HAFED went through changed the format of the dialogue between the farmer, market, and state. By having the input of farmers from the very beginning, HAFED has given a voice to the small and large alike. Being empowered in this way gives the farmer a better advantage in dealing with the state as they can push for initiatives that help give them access to inputs and technologies that may otherwise be unavailable to them. Likewise, it allows farmers to influence the market through unofficial means; coming to the HAFED to lobby on their behalf for better market prices or access gives them a greater opportunity for success than trying to influence the market directly as individuals. It also gives them more buying power by going through a central point versus having to source from multiple agencies.
The original farmer-to-farmer mutually dependant power arrangement moved into the farmer-market symbiotic power arrangement where HAFED influenced which inputs were purchased and the Fair Trade movement in Northern India grew as they exposed farmers to new technologies and market availability. The two needed each other; farmers needed the purchasing power of the co-op and the co-op needed the membership fees of the farmers.
Soon the HAFED was influencing policies within the government, moving from farmer-market to third-sector-state cooperative power arrangements, for example, the creation and rewriting of the Fertilizers Supply Policy w.e.f. 27.9.2013, whose objective is to “strengthen…the Cooperative Institutions (PACSs & CMSs) engaged in the supply of fertilizers to…farmers in…rural areas” (Department of Economic and Statistical Analysis, 2015) . This move from a niche, grassroots informal system of business to a formalized regime based system of embedded policymakers allows them to engage the public in a broader context, anchoring them institutionally.
As a change agent, HAFED has shown that a small group can make a difference at a large scale. They have also shown what happens when that group is willing and able to adapt to changes in needs and what happens when they see opportunities for growth. If other states within India adopted HAFED’s practices (or something similar), one may see the creation of several state-operated (or at least influenced) co-operatives with farmers, processing agents, marketing, and logistical organizations all centered in a single large-scale operation. However, this may limit farmer access for those that do not wish to go through the HAFED; especially if the HAFED is not transparent or if their intentions for the co-op change. HAFED’s conglomeration of many alternative agents in a bid to become more self-sufficient may in fact work against the HAFED in the future, as a limitation of market access may force farmers or businesses to split off and push back against the HAFED.
Vandana Shiva-The Voice of India?
Identify the agents (or agencies) promoting change in your case/food system and their role/position in the food system.
Outspoken Anti-GMO activist, Vandana Shiva, straddles the fence between Community, Third (NGO), and State Sectors. As a promoter of traditional knowledge through her NGO “Navdanya,” or nine-seeds (Third Sector), she fights for farmers’ rights and autonomy/independence, traditional knowledge sharing, and seed biodiversity. As a member of the scientific committee, Foundation IDEAS (Spain's Socialist Party's think tank) and the Indian Government’s Committees on Organic Farming, she lobbies for anti-GMO policies within the State-level. As a member of non-governmental organizations, including the International Forum on Globalization, the Women's Environment & Development Organization and the Third World Network (IOPS), she pushes for environmental food sovereignty and anti-globalization policies and actions from all levels (Community).
Her participation and drive for, with, and in addition to the above organizations and notions makes her a change agent. Through her communication campaigns and her lobbying measures she forces/drives/pressures companies and governments to react to her messages in the face of public outcry and disproval. She is active at all levels, but predominantly at the Policy Level and the Innovation Support System level as an advisor. She is very active in the media, which has brought her a popular activist image, although attention does not necessarily mean action.
How are these changes initiated: by grassroots initiatives or promoted by the expert or innovation system (research institutes)?
Shiva’s association started from a grassroot initiative; small scale seed banks. Experience and above all connections from her former involvement in grassroot ecological projects enabled her to develop the association and reach an international audience, making her organization part of the institutional landscape.
Her participation in institutional organizations, combined with her campaigns targeting the civil society audience puts her between niche and regime, but closer to the regime side as these are formal policy agencies. The agricultural projects she has initiated are embedded in the niche as alternatives but by her activism she aims at making them mainstream, ultimately wanting them to replace the green revolution model.
In what ways do these change agents enable and anchor change?
Vandana Shiva anchors change (which is when an agent gives other actors the ability to move forward with the item/philosophy) in multiple fields.
Institutional anchoring can be recognized through her media-centered communication and virulent pushing for specific causes, which have considerably gained public attention surrounding the topics of GMOs, women’s agricultural involvement and asymmetrical power relation (Monsanto vs. smallholders). Her campaign and victory against the patenting of Basmati rice can be seen as an example of this (Navdanya 2016). In a way, one could argue that she is forming and transforming the public opinion to her cause.
As an active member of the Indian government, she has the power to lobby against GMO’s and in favor of her ideas on farming and seed biodiversity. This power within the Policy Level is exemplified by her ability to push through a ban on all GMO food production; Bt-Cotton is the only exception of GMO production in India. In fact, the government has in the past banned the production of GMO aubergine (eggplant) and given states the power to veto genetically modified crop field trials (Kumar 2015 Nature).
Network anchoring can be spotted in the growth of communities around seed banks and the sharing of information. Shiva’s NGO, Navdanya, has set up 120+ seed banks throughout India, where the farming communities are responsible for the management after initial setup. They have also trained over 750,000 farmers over the last 20 years in food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture, thus growing their movement (Navdanya 2016). This communication, especially around new agricultural practices and techniques showcases her connection to the Innovation Support System.
Although Vandana Shiva does not advocate new technologies, we would still like to argue that her movement for change has been technically anchored by enabling farmers to adapt to the style of farming she promotes - ex. more biodiversity through seed banks, technical know-how, and by removing lock-ins to agroecological conversion through more flexible contracts. Although this sharing of knowledge and seed biodiversity may at the start be considered as a Fit approach by Navdanya combining their own expertise with the localized knowledge of the farmer, this quickly turns into more of a Flow movement when farmers start to self-organize and teach each other and seed banks are set up by other seed banks (Navdanya 2016; Sherwood et al. 2016).
Are these changes transformative?
Shiva’s ability to transform public opinion is comparable in some ways to public shaming. This allows her to use the media to influence public policy and opinion and limit or ‘stop’ change. As such, we would like to argue that Vandana Shiva is also an anti-change agent, but only where it suits her agenda. The main example is her successful lobbying against GMOs as stated above. The ideal situation she aims for involves changing some elements (empowering farmers) and preventing others (influence of private interests). In the same line of reasoning, we argue that she has also stopped unethical transformation of the rice production system.
Although Vandana Shiva has transformed many farming communities through the spreading of knowledge and seed banks, a full transformation of India’s rice production system can only become reality if it is adopted by a significant number of producers, nationwide. As such, for Vandana Shiva’s change to reach a tipping point we argue that the state needs to be a key player in accepting the policies that Vandana promotes. Currently, however, the state seems to be somewhat caught in between the public opinion - formed in part by Shiva’s activism - and modernization and globalization - where India wants to become a key player on global stage.
SRI: The Next Wave of Innovation?
Identify the agents (or agencies) promoting change in your case/food system and their role/position in the food system.
The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is an agro-ecological innovation created by Research Institutions (State-Third Sector) that does not depend on conventional Green Revolution strategies of intensification. SRI has been explicitly conceived and presented, not as a new technology, but rather as a methodology to grow rice based on a set of ideas and insights that were translated into specific practices which sought to create a more favorable growing environment for irrigated rice plants. In this way, SRI promoted the building up of an alternative system based on existing knowledge of rice production with the benefit of having an ‘open source’ culture: that is, farmers are actively encouraged to change the methodology so that it works best in their region and with their crops. These adaptations are accomplished through the efforts of farmers, NGOs and other non-state actors.
SRI offers an alternative way for farmers to reclaim control over their livelihoods through experimentation, collective action, adaptation, and innovation. It evolved in India as a dynamic and diverse response to Green Revolution practices as a transformative socio-technical innovation and supports the emergence of an alternative ‘support network’ (Network anchoring) which includes farmers, researchers, and different institutional entrepreneurs in order to transcend conventional agricultural networks. This process allows for the innovation to find common ground, adapt to different contexts and for networks around it to be consolidated. Part of the success in this technology in becoming an embedded practice in Indian culture is because it includes local communities in the knowledge exchange processes.
How are these changes initiated: by grassroots initiatives or promoted by the expert or innovation system (research institutes)?
From the outset, this innovation system was treated as ‘open source’, thereby ensuring free access to farmers and researchers to spread and improve it. The actors who implemented SRI were encouraged to draw on their own potential for experimentation instead of expecting and letting commercial interests drive the development of the SRI methodology. The intensified contact and exchange among actors intensified their interdependence, thus leading to a strengthened network anchoring. Finally, the ‘open experimentation’ approach grew beyond research institute frameworks and has, to date, reached an estimated 10 million farmers across 50 countries and on more than 4 million hectares (Uphoff et al. 2015).
SRI is not a set system of rules and prescriptions which need to be adhered to. It tends to be molded into a Fit model based on case-to-case requirements in the sense that it was promoted as a technology adapted to the Indian context but developed elsewhere. Its adoption is constantly being updated to local contexts and shared by and among farmers; hence it has started to be transformed into a Flow model, as it enables the farmer to be an integral part, both of the innovation itself and of the transformed food system, making them more socially embedded. Therefore, as the SRI methodology was adopted and adapted by different actors, it gradually became more specific to their needs and their contexts, thus leading to technological anchoring.
In what ways do these change agents enable and anchor change?
The effect of this innovation being anchored in the Indian rice production culture is widespread. It moved the focus back to rain-fed areas and from farmers with larger landholdings to farmers with small and marginal landholdings (Prasad, 2016). This change indirectly empowers the small and marginal farmers by providing them with technical know-how to increase production and their living standards, meaning a shift of focus toward household or local food security. From a social innovation point of view, it created new innovation networks that enable sustainable transitions and re-engage vulnerable communities.
The SRI innovation encourages farmers to include indigenous varieties of rice back into their management practices. This enhanced the ability for farmers to experiment and allowed them to focus on varieties that improve household nutritional security in many parts of malnourished India. Shifting the focus from commercial seed varieties to indigenous varieties promotes self-sufficiency and empowers farmers to take back control of their seed stock and production methods. Since it has allowed for such a significant shift in power via this anchoring, we argue that SRI enables the Indian rice production culture.
Are these changes transformative?
We see SRI’s transformative abilities through three key points: farmers are moving back to rain-fed farm regions, indigenous varieties of rice are being reintroduced through SRI methodologies, and the SRI methodology, as a State-approved technique, is becoming more widespread within the farming community. These transformations, coupled with promotion by the State and Research Institutions (who are able to train farmers and facilitate the transfer of new knowledge), enable the entrenchment of innovation and allow more time for farmers to optimize a system based on available alternatives. Likewise, by enabling the entrenchment of innovation, we argue that the government can create policies that create political momentum and promote institutional anchoring allowing it to move beyond institutional contexts and into the wider society.
Conclusion
One can view the creation of co-ops like HAFED as a precursor for current change agents like Vandana Shiva and SRI. The ability to look at a system that has, in effect, gone through all the stages of development-from an idea to a formalized institutionally embedded political entity-allows us to reflect upon Vandana Shiva’s NGO work and SRI’s communications within the farming diasporas. Vandana Shiva emphasizes pushing against the modern, industrialized agricultural communities through predominantly bottom-up public forums, whereas the SRI method is largely a top-down government sanctioned initiative. Both have value and can be pulled apart to review in smaller microcosms of data analytics and community reviews, but the truth of their ability to continue the changes they have started will lay in the future, perhaps for others to review many years from now, or perhaps, in our own coursework.
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