







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 2 (1): 139–144, January 2019 

NOTES FROM THE FIELD  
 

Mountain Agriculture at a Crossroads? Understanding 
Household-level Decision-making in Rapidly Changing 
Socio-economic Contexts 
 

Reinmar Seidler, Rinzi Lama  and Poonam Rai  
 
1. AGRICULTURAL INNOVATIONS, ALTERNATIVE LIVE-
LIHOODS AND “RESILIENCE” 

We have been implementing an action-research program in 30 villages of 
the Darjeeling Hills (North Bengal). These villages are scattered around the 
borders of two significant protected areas, Singalila National Park and 
Senchel Wildlife Sanctuary. Our over-arching research questions have been: 
What impact is the changing climate currently having on rural life and 
economy, and what can be expected in the near future? To answer these 
questions, we have gathered data on agricultural productivity at the 
household level over five years. But we have also wanted to understand 
what options there might be for increasing rural resilience and adaptation to 
changing conditions; so we have supported interventions in several simple 
but useful agricultural technologies. These include polyhouses to protect 
delicate crops such as chillies and leafy greens; bee boxes to increase and 
systematize honey production, and to support pollination services; 

 
 Department of Biology and Graduate Program in Critical and Creative Thinking, 
University of Massachusetts, Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston MA 02125, USA; 

reinmar.seidler@umb.edu.  

 Department of Anthropology, North Bengal University, Raja Rammohunpur, Darjeeling-

734014, West Bengal, India; rinzi.lama@gmail.com 

 Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Darjeeling 
Office, 17/B Cooch Bihar Road, Darjeeling-737401, West Bengal, India; 
poonam.rai@atree.org 

Copyright © Seidler, Lama and Rai 2019. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i1.61  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v2i1.61


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [140] 

mushroom production; and training in soil management technologies such 
as vermiculture, terrace management, and the use of cover crops and 
organic pesticides. We have sought to help forge market linkages for new 
products where these were lacking, and to support villages interested in 
building community enterprises in eco-tourism and educational tourism.  

We are aware that many of these innovations tend to communicate a vision 
of “resilience” that is in some sense “conservative”. Strengthening village 
agricultural economies, encouraging investments in soil management for the 
long term, advocating for the importance of healthy soil microbiota, 
thinking in terms of future climate scenarios — these interventions tend to 
reinforce concepts of village food security and the continued relative 
independence of village economies.  

Yet, as the rural road network extends into the hills and vehicular traffic 
increases, there is a parallel, and in some sense opposite, regional trend 
toward market integration and urban-rural interdependence. As the pace of 
socio-economic change accelerates, possibilities open up that were 
previously closed to many rural communities: easier market access, better 
education, off-farm employment opportunities, etc. A widening range of 
life choices naturally produces a revaluation of previously-accepted aspects 
of daily life.  

Consequently, a family’s priorities may rapidly shift away from the size and 
quality of the household harvest. Even if a household still considers itself 
fundamentally a farming household, within a few seasons the effort put into 
the strenuous work of farming may be reduced. Low-productivity portions 
of land may be abandoned. Ripening crops may be less vigorously defended 
against the intrusions of wild animals. The availability of local alternatives to 
smallholder agriculture raises the opportunity costs of continued farm 
work. How then should we expect people to respond to our interventions? 

As in any sample of communities, household-level data show wide variation 
in individual responses. Some of the more entrepreneurial-minded adopt 
the new technologies and push them forward to strengthen their 
agricultural base. Others see smallholder mountain agriculture as a “losing 
game” in competition with the cheap food-stuffs trucked up from the 
plains. The result is a rapid overall turn toward reduced investment in 
smallholder agriculture, and a growing emphasis on non-farm income and 
mixed livelihoods.  

However, when asked in surveys why they are reducing farming, many 
respondents emphasize environmental factors — especially human-wildlife 
conflict (HWC) and climate change. Villagers say both of these have been 
intensifying over the last 10-15 years. But these perceptions coexist with the 



[141] Reinmar Seidler, Rinzi Lama, and Poonam Rai 

transformative regional economic trends described above. Are 
environmental changes actually driving current economic choices? Or on the 
other hand, are rapidly changing values and opportunities the main 
determinants of livelihood choices, despite the discourse emphasizing 
climate and HWC? 

 

2. AMBIGUOUS TRENDS IN HUMAN-WILDLIFE CONFLICT 

It is challenging to verify that HWC is in fact increasing, and if it is, when 
the increase started. In these villages, we know that earlier generations 
regularly set night watches to prevent crop attacks during harvest seasons. 
This shows there must always have been pressure on crops — 
understandably, since fields of ripening crops close to forest edges would 
always have represented a uniquely rich nutrient source for animals.  

Already in some of its earliest issues, the environmental journal Down To 
Earth (DTE) reported complaints of increasing HWC. For instance, in 
January 1994, Amit Mitra published a piece describing the problem in a hilly 
area of Pune district (Mitra 1994). He quotes a tribal farmer: “All 25 
households in my village have been affected and more than half our crop 
has been destroyed.” As early as 1987, formal research on the subject had 
already been carried out in the area: “A sample survey of 25 hamlets in the 
area revealed that 412 farmers had been affected and 96,000 kg of food 
grains were lost that year." And these villagers seemed quite certain about 
the cause of increased depredation by wild boar: it was the new 
Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary (gazetted 1987) and the attendant ban on 
hunting.  

In 1998, another report in DTE (Anonymous 1998) described tribal 
community distress in Parambiculam Wildlife Sanctuary, Kerala (established 
1973). This article referred to the “same old story of crop-raiding, as the 
wild animals destroy whatever is planted in the little land they have”. Just 
how old was this “same old” HWC story in 1998? 

Across much of India, there seems to have been an inflection point in the 
early-to-mid-1990s when published HWC reports become more numerous. 
This inflection point is correlated in time with the establishment, 
throughout the 1980s, of many new Protected Areas (PAs). From fewer 
than 200 in 1980, the total number of PAs in India leapt to nearly 500 by 
1990 (ENVIS n.d.). These PAs imposed strict bans on hunting and forest 
livestock grazing. 

Although currently somewhat taboo in India, it is recognized across the 
globe that without large populations of top predators, fast-reproducing 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [142] 

herbivore populations in PAs tend to expand explosively (e.g., Massei et al. 
2014). A clear corollary of this ecological reality is that PA management 
must assume responsibility for controlling these populations – both for 
social reasons and for ecological ones. Disproportionate expansion of 
herbivore populations can only have destabilizing and degrading effects on 
the reserve’s ecology, endangering its value both as habitat and as national 
heritage. 

As today’s debates about the systematic culling of fast-reproducing, 
depredatory mammals become increasingly contentious (Arockiaraj 2015; 
Choudhary 2016; Chakravartty et al. 2016; Balachandran 2016), it is easy to 
forget that already in the 1980s, environmentalist Anil Agarwal and 
researchers at the Centre for Science and Environment were pointing out 
the necessity for a systematic approach to population control of wild boars 
and other depredating species (Mitra 2015). 

Our own research on crop raiding in Darjeeling hills shows that there is 
relentless pressure on forest village crops from wild boar, muntjac, 
porcupine, black bear and macaque. The losses are greatest among the 
households that depend most strongly on agriculture, plant the most and 
thus have the most to lose. We are experimenting with combinations of 
fencing types, but the effectiveness of any fencing method depends crucially 
on long-term maintenance and also on village micro-geography. Large 
villages on steep, irregular terrain with dense surrounding forest are 
probably impossible to fence effectively. In such places, the best currently 
available defense against crop raiding is, in fact, to reduce the investment in 
crops. Thus, when viable livelihood alternatives emerge, the opportunity 
costs of continuing to pursue agriculture rise exponentially and many 
households contemplate leaving agriculture entirely. Isn’t this a social cost 
India’s PA system should be considering in its management plans? 

 

3. LOCAL VARIABILITY IN CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS 

What about climate change? We know that the Himalayan range is 
experiencing rapid changes. But these trends are extremely complex and 
variable across the region. High-relief terrain, deep and steeply-carved 
valleys produce extreme rain-shadow effects.  Variable soils and substrates 
can create conditions of drought due to run-off even in high-rainfall areas. 
For instance, South Sikkim district, just across the Rangit River valley from 
Darjeeling, receives an average of 1625mm of precipitation annually – 
generous in the larger scheme of things, but only half of Sikkim’s maxima 
(e.g., Gangtok, 3494 mm). Yet even within comparatively tiny South 
Sikkim, there is great variability: the edges of the district receive more than 



[143] Reinmar Seidler, Rinzi Lama, and Poonam Rai 

2000mm annually, while Namchi subdivision in central South Sikkim is 
considered a “drought-prone region”. Even at a single location, annual 
rainfall may vary from some 750mm in July to none at all in December. 
Communities situated high atop ridges, far from the perennial rivers below, 
depend on hill-side springs for fresh water. Springs depend on groundwater 
recharge processes, which in turn depend not only on quantity of rainfall 
but also on timing and intensity. Thus, if an average or above-average 
quantity of rain falls during a monsoon month, but is restricted to relatively 
few days of fierce rainfall, much of the water will run off the surface, 
leaving negligible recharge. Given this high degree of local spatio-temporal 
variability, attributing outcomes to climate change in the Eastern Himalaya 
is very tricky.  

In summary, the two most often-cited environmental pressures on 
agriculture in Eastern Himalaya are complex and difficult to measure 
reliably. They are occurring in tandem with fast-moving, multidimensional 
socio-economic changes. Decisions on livelihoods and resource use are 
being made within an unprecedentedly fluid social context. We must be 
circumspect in attributing such decisions to any single driver, and we should 
not expect surveys to tell the whole story. 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

The research program described here was supported in part by grants from 
USAID India (AID-386 A-14-00011) and from the Barr Foundation 
(Boston). 

 

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