India’s Greenhouse Revolution

gestalten - Mark Mann

The non-profit startup aiming to turn India's class of small-scale farmers into 'smart' farmers



Climate change is threatening the viability of millions of small farms in India, but an innovative new greenhouse solution is transforming the lives of vulnerable farmers.

For small independent farmers in dry regions of India, water supply can too easily mean the difference between life and death.

The long droughts, extended heat waves, and unpredictable rainfall brought about by global warming have proven disastrous for many of India’s 146 million small farms, 85 percent of which now lose more money than they make.

Venkatesh Appala grows bell peppers in his Kheyti greenhouse and is using the extra income to save for his daughter’s dowry. (Photo: Sara Hylton, The New Traditional)

In aid of soaring demands, a new kind of greenhouse is making a dramatic difference for some vulnerable farmers.

Hyderabad-based non-profit Kheyti (Hindi for farming) has created an affordable and effective greenhouse system that helps small farms bring stability to their crop production and withstand the worst effects of climate change. The company is calling it the “smart farmer revolution.”

Goats eat tomatoes in an empty farming field in a rural area near Laxmapur village, just north of Hyderabad city. (Photo: Sara Hylton, The New Traditional)

Unlike typical glass greenhouses, Kheyti’s modular Greenhouse-in-a-Box (GIB) is designed to keep light and heat out. Draped across a simple metal frame, the system uses four layers of breathable aluminum-coated nettings to stop pests, partially reflect sunlight (preventing crop damage from excessive heat), and reduce water loss through evaporation.

 The technology allows impoverished farmers to use 90 percent less water, grow seven times more food, and achieve better and more dependable yields, thereby helping to stabilize income. Kheyti’s system costs about half the price of other greenhouses, and the company says that after six years farmers can expect to earn $100 (€90) a month, the equivalent of one year’s revenue under normal conditions.

Kheyti’s greenhouse also employs micro-irrigation, or drip irrigation, a technology that was first commercialized over 80 years ago but has not reached the vast majority of farmers in India until now. Drip irrigation confers much better water efficiency than the reliance on seasonal rainfall.

Coupled with its heat-resistant netting, the Kheyti greenhouse requires just 265 gallons (1,000 liters) per day, which is 20 percent of what farmers would otherwise use in an open farming plan, according to co-founder Shradha Sharma.

Biki Malavath, whose age is unknown, holds her great-granddaughter, nicknamed “Milky,” the youngest member of the village. Laxmapur in Thanda is a village for Lambadi people, considered one of India’s more disadvantaged communities. (Photo: Sara Hylton, The New Traditional)

Launched in 2015, Kheyti offers more than just specialized technology. To help achieve the best results, the social enterprise conducts in-person field training workshops and provides advice via mobile devices (80 percent of India’s farmers own some sort of smartphone).

They even built in a supply chain. The GIB package comes bundled with added seeds and fertilizer, and Kheyti is also set up to connect farmers with produce retailers.

Since most of India’s farmers don’t have the capital to purchase a greenhouse, Kheyti has partnered with the country’s Bank of Baroda to help farmers obtain flexible loans. After an initial down payment of 30,000 rupees, or about $471 (€423), farmers can pay back their loan in installments after each growing season.

Bhavanth and his wife, Bujji, grow tomatoes in their greenhouse, located on the family farm near Laxmapur village in Telangana state. Bhavanth was the first to purchase a greenhouse from Kheyti. (Photo: Sara Hylton, The New Traditional)

One of the best parts of Kheyti’s approach is the culture of sharing and collaboration it creates between participating farmers. When they sign up for a greenhouse, farmers automatically join a collective that meets weekly to compare notes and discuss best practices. Sometimes they pitch in and help with each other’s crops.

These extra supports, both from Kheyti and the collective, enable farmers like Katikala Shyamala, the head woman of a small village called Laxmapur, to operate a greenhouse while still managing other responsibilities and raising children.

The co-founder Sathya Raghu Mokkapati made it his mission to help India’s poor farmers after witnessing a penniless farmer resort to eating mud.

An accountant by training, Mokkapati understood the importance of small farmers to be able to access financing and the difference it could make for their profitability, but he knew he would need more hands-on experience to tackle the problem.

After leaving his corporate job, he and Sharma spent three and a half years farming a 100-acre plot and working with nearly 8,000 farmers to try different methods and crops.

Yadav Bhavanth’s nieces and nephews get ready to take produce to the local market. (Photo: Sara Hylton, The New Traditional)

Along with their third co-founder, Saumya (who doesn’t use a surname), and some help from engineering students at Northwestern University and Stanford University, the entrepreneurs created a design that would mitigate the effects of extreme climate variability.

Once finalized, Kheyti began performing proofs of the concept with 150 farmers in 15 villages in 2018. The trials proved immediately and immensely successful. Early participants found they were able to produce the same yield in their small greenhouses as an entire acre outside, and use the leftover profits to send their children to school.

In the past year, Kheyti has impoverished people, and yet these worked to bring on another 1,000 farmers—all low-income women farmers—in collaboration with the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty. Kheyti’s ambitions go much further: they aim to reach 100,000 environmental volatility, and market farmer families by 2025.

If all goes well, their greenhouse tech has the simple, innovative greenhouse sole potential to expand internationally. Smallholder farmers make up one of the world’s largest constituencies of impoverished people, and yet these farms are responsible for growing 80 percent of the food on the planet.

Around the world, half a billion small farmers are struggling to survive due to factors like poor yields, environmental volatility, and market fluctuations.

If it scales, Kheyti’s simple, innovative greenhouse solution could have a transformative impact on the lives of millions.

Links

• Deadly Tensions Rise As India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low
• 12-Step Climate Change & Global Warming Action Plan For India
• India, Once A Coal Goliath, Is Fast Turning Green
• India's Women Seaweed Divers Swim Against The Tide Of Climate Change
• For Mumbai's Slum-Dwellers, Climate Change Is Slicing Away The Haves From The Have-Nots
• India Taps Solar, Storage To Ensure All Homes Have Power In 2018
• India Will Sell Only Electric Cars Within The Next 13 Years
• To Slow Climate Change, India Joins The Renewable Energy Revolution

(AU) 'Breakthrough Moment': Woodside Investors Revolt On Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick Toscano

Woodside Petroleum has been hit with a record-breaking investor push to slash emissions and link executive pay to achieving bold new targets, as Australia's oil and gas industry emerges as the next front for shareholder pressure on climate change.

More than 50 per cent of investors backed motions on Thursday for Woodside to commit to hard targets to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions and its vastly greater "indirect" emissions – known as Scope 3 emissions – from customers of its products such as power plants around the world.

Australian oil and gas giants Woodside and Santos have come under mounting investor pressure on climate change.

A similar revolt rocked Australia's second-largest oil and gas producer, Santos, last week when 43 per cent of investors voted in support of the same demands.

The climate motions, prepared by ethical investment group the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), called for Woodside to set emissions targets in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement to limit global warming well below 2 degrees.

It also called for details of how the company's remuneration policy incentivised progress against these targets, and how Woodside's looming investments in dramatically expanding gas output in the coming years were aligned with the Paris goals.

The resolution won the backing of more than half of Woodside's investors, despite the urging of the board. The support is the highest ever in corporate Australia for a shareholder resolution calling for direct and indirect emissions targets.

"This is a breakthrough moment for investor action on climate change in Australia," the ACCR's Dan Gocher said.

"The call for companies to set target on Scope 3 emissions is now supported by more than 50 per cent of shareholders in Australia's largest oil and gas company ... a striking number in the absence of board support.

Woodside would now be in "open conflict" with the majority of its shareholders until it moved to set meaningful targets, Mr Gocher said.

Woodside, which has an ambition for "net zero" emissions for its own operations by 2050, had urged shareholders to vote down the motions, saying it was supportive of the Paris goals while its gas exports were helping to displace higher-emissions fuel sources in Asia such as coal-fired power.

"We produce an energy source, natural gas, that can displace higher emissions fuels and get the
world's energy mix shifting in the right direction," Woodside chairman Richard Goyder said. "Our industry has a big role to play."

While supporters of gas argue it's a vastly less emissions-intensive energy source than coal, critics say it remains a heavy source of emissions and believe its role in keeping global warming well below 2 degrees is limited.

A second resolution on Thursday, for Woodside to review its links to fossil fuel industry groups to determine if their positions were inconsistent with goals to arrest global warming, gained a 42 per cent yes vote.

Both resolutions were not officially put to Thursday's meeting as they depended on the passing of another motion to amend the company's constitution, but results were disclosed in the "interests of transparency"

In recent months, some of the world's top oil and gas giants including BP and Royal Dutch Shell have vowed to set targets for Scope 3 emissions, meaning they will account for the carbon footprint of the energy products they ship and sell to customers around the world. To lower indirect emissions, companies will work with customers to help them decarbonise and seek to diversify into cleaner sources of energy.

BHP is Australia's only resources company to vow to set Scope 3 targets.

Emma Herd of the Investor Group on Climate Change, representing Australian and New Zealand institutional investors with $2 trillion of assets under management, said Australia's oil and gas producers were "now clearly at risk of falling behind" their European counterparts in establishing plans to diversify their businesses and set targets in line with the Paris agreement.

"The sizeable investor votes in favour of climate change resolutions at the Woodside and Santos annual general meetings are a reminder that investors are deeply concerned about the systemic threat global warming poses to sustainable returns fo their beneficiaries," Ms Herd said. "It is incumbent now on Woodside to work constructively with their investors to develop real plans to transition to a net-zero emissions company by 2050."

Mr Goyder said Woodside's response to global warming was a topic the board regularly discussed with investors.

"The fact that global emissions growth is likely to slow this year due to the severe economic downturn is not in anyway an excuse for inaction," he said. "This is still major challenge for the world."

Links

• German Companies Call For COVID-19 Aid To Be Tied To Climate Action
• (US) Companies Expect Climate Change To Cost Them $1 Trillion In 5 Years
• Bank Of England Chief Mark Carney Issues Climate Change Warning
• The New Science Fossil Fuel Companies Fear
• Bank Of England Boss Says Global Finance Is Funding 4C Temperature Rise
• Companies Expect Climate Change To Cost Them $1 Trillion In 5 Years
• Australia’s Biggest Property Companies Are Making Net-Zero Emissions Pledges – Now We Can Track Them
• 'Out Of Line': Top Australian Companies Accused Of Undermining Paris Deal
• Climate Action Helps Companies Build Reputations And Attract Investors

Climate Change Is Pushing Bird Boundaries, Community Scientists Confirm

National Audubon Society

In the first peer-reviewed study of its kind, participants in Audubon’s Climate Watch program helped determine the ongoing impact of climate change to bluebirds and nuthatches.

Eastern Bluebird. Photo: Lewis Barnett/Audubon Photography Awards

Birds In This Story White-breasted Nuthatch Sitta carolinensis song Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis song Painted Bunting Passerina ciris song

NEW YORK — Today, the journal Ecological Applications published a final version of a study from National Audubon Society scientists demonstrating that climate change is causing a measurable shift of birds’ ranges during winter and breeding seasons.

Years of bird observations gathered by hundreds of volunteer participants in Audubon’s Climate Watch community science program confirm projections made earlier by Audubon that rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will likely result in the colonization of new territories by North American birds.

“Climate change is disrupting hundreds of bird species, and thanks to community scientists all across the country, we can visualize these disruptions in real time and plan conservation efforts accordingly,” said Sarah Saunders, PhD, quantitative ecologist at Audubon and lead author of the study.

The study concludes that climate-vulnerable birds are indeed shifting their distributions at pace with changes in climate suitability due to rising global temperatures.

The most outstanding examples take place during the birds’ wintering season, which is not unexpected given the more pronounced changes in temperature attributable to climate change taking place in winter months.

Notably, the study is also the first to use independently gathered volunteer observations to validate climate suitability projections.

The authors of the study suggest further assessment of the habitat suitability of the newly colonized territories to determine whether these new areas can sustain the avian newcomers.

Climate Watch, an Audubon community science program that invites volunteers to count and identify select species of birds deemed climate vulnerable by Audubon climate science, provides the observation data used in the analysis.

Each year, from January 15 to February 15 and May 15 to June 15, community scientists all across the country look for 12 species: White-breasted Nuthatch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Pygmy Nuthatch, Western Bluebird, Mountain Bluebird, Eastern Bluebird, Lesser Goldfinch, American Goldfinch, Eastern Towhee, Spotted Towhee and Painted Buntings.

The dual two-week windows represent wintering and breeding seasons for the chosen species.

The climate-suitable ranges for each of these species are projected to change as their habitats shift, shrink, or expand due to rising global temperatures.

Regularly gathered observations allow researchers to track any shifts in species distributions.

“Climate Watch volunteers have confirmed the accuracy of Audubon’s climate projections, which show that two-thirds of North American birds are at risk of extinction by the end of this century,” said Brooke Bateman, PhD, Audubon’s senior climate scientist and lead author of Survival by Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink, a report published in October 2019.

“Luckily, Audubon science also shows that we can protect three-quarters of these vulnerable bird species by keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” said Bateman.

Audubon’s climate suitability projections for each of these climate-vulnerable bird species allows conservationists to protect not only the places birds need today, but also the places birds will need in a climate-altered future.

For further study, five new species have been added to the list of Climate Watch birds—the towhees, goldfinches and bunting listed above—representing birds found across a broader geographic area and in urban areas, which will allow a more in-depth look at the validity of climate suitability projections and invite even more community scientists to participate in the effort.

Links

• (AU) Birds are the “canaries in the climate-change coal mine”
• (AU) Birds threatened by rapid climate change
• Rising temperatures could make some U.S. state birds ‘stateless’
• Climate change isn't just shifting how the world feels, it's changing how it sounds
• Decline in 'successful' bird species like magpies and kookaburras rings alarm bells
• Climate change is causing birds to shrink, study suggests
• Population responses of bird populations to climate change on two continents vary with species’ ecological traits but not with direction of change in climate suitability