By Prof. Sanjay-Swami
Indigenous farming practices in North East India represent an extraordinary fusion of cultural heritage, biodiversity conservation, and ecological engineering. Over millennia, more than 130 tribal communities across the eight states have developed highly efficient resource management systems tailored to fragile mountain ecosystems. The prominent traditional farming practices across the region include:
Apatani rice-fish culture (Arunachal Pradesh): Practised by the Apatani tribe in the Ziro valley, this is a highly evolved wetland rice cultivation (Esiarik) system. Farmers utilize a network of channels to integrate paddy fields with fish farming. The fields act as a synchronized ecosystem where organic wastes from fish enrich the soil, and the fish eat harmful crop pests.
Zabo or Ruza system (Nagaland): Developed by the Chakhesang tribe, Zabo translates to “catching water”. It integrates forestry, water harvesting, animal husbandry, and agriculture. Rainwater from hilltop forests runs into protected silt-retention tanks, flows past livestock yards to pick up organic nutrients, and finally irrigates terraced rice fields in the valley.
Bamboo drip irrigation (Meghalaya): Khasi and Jaintia tribal farmers use a 200-year-old network of split-bamboo channels to tap hill stream waters. It operates entirely on gravity, channelling up to 20 litres of water per minute across hundreds of metres to deliver targeted water drop-by-drop to black pepper, betel leaf, and crop roots.
Alder-based agroforestry (Nagaland): The Angami and Konyak tribes preserve indigenous Alnus nepalensis (Alder) trees inside shifting cultivation fields. Alder trees are nitrogen-fixing nodes that replenish soil fertility, allowing farmers to cultivate crops for multiple years consecutively with significantly shortened fallow cycles.
Jhum cultivation (Shifting cultivation): Widely prominent across the hill states, Jhum involves clearing small forest patches, burning biomass for ash nutrients, and cultivating diverse mixed crops for a few seasons before abandoning the site to let natural forests regenerate.
Traditional soil and pest management
Polyculture and mixed cropping: Communities plant dozens of mutually beneficial food crops (millets, maize, tubers, and beans) in a single plot to reduce total crop failure risk and maintain organic ground cover.
In-situ residue mulching: Crop stalks and wild weeds are left on slopes to decompose naturally, creating moisture-trapping barriers that mitigate heavy monsoon soil erosion.
Botanical formulations: Farmers apply fermented extracts from local medicinal herbs, wild pepper variety derivatives, and fresh wood ash directly onto crops to naturally repel insect pests without synthetic chemicals.
Climate change impacts on indigenous farming practices
Climate change is heavily disrupting the indigenous farming practices of North East India, threatening centuries-old knowledge systems with rising temperatures, severe monsoon deficits, and unpredictable extreme weather events. Because over 85% of agriculture in this region is entirely rain-fed, even minor environmental shifts trigger significant cascading failures in traditional ecosystems.
Direct impacts on indigenous systems
The specific stressors degrading traditional agricultural infrastructure include:
Disruption of jhum (Shifting Cultivation) calendars: Unpredictable pre-monsoon rains and extended dry spells have altered the timing for clearing and burning plots. Early or delayed rains prevent proper burning of biomass, reducing the essential ash nutrients needed for multi-crop growth.
Drying of streams for bamboo drip irrigation: In Meghalaya, despite historic rainfall peaks, overall monsoon periods are compressing into shorter, hyper-intense bursts. Perennial mountain springs are drying up faster during the dry months, leaving gravity-fed bamboo networks without a continuous water supply.
Threats to Apatani rice-fish culture: Rising land surface temperatures and seasonal water stress directly impact the fragile shallow-water balance required in paddy fields. Higher water temperatures stall indigenous fish breeding and lower overall rice yields.
Declines in high-value traditional crops: Native signature crops like the famous Khasi Mandarin oranges in Meghalaya and large cardamom in Sikkim are suffering from a surge in new fungal pest attacks and moisture stress brought on by warming microclimates. Apple and kiwi boundaries are actively shifting to higher elevations.
Monsoon deficits: Data tracked over recent decades reveals that the region experienced lower-than-normal rain in 19 out of 21 years, severely squeezing traditional sowing windows.
Escalated land degradation: Heavy, compressed rain bursts on high-slope terrains accelerate topsoil erosion. Shifting cultivation zones face an erosion risk increase of up to 3.1 times by the end of the century.
Income and yield losses: Projected climate impacts estimate a drop of roughly 9% in regional rice productivity and a sharp 19 to 24% reduction in farm earnings across unirrigated tribal lands.
Active indigenous adaptation strategies
To counteract these stresses, tribal communities are combining modern awareness with traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to build localized climate resilience:
Reviving “Dus Parivar” (Ten Families) pest management: Many farming groups are moving strictly away from experimental chemical inputs. They intentionally maintain habitats for multiple predatory insects, spiders, and birds within their fields to serve as a natural biological defence against climate-induced pest surges.
Transitioning to climate-resilient tubers: When staple paddy fields fail due to erratic rainfall, communities rely heavily on drought-resilient traditional tubers, wild yams, and varieties of millets that thrive despite low moisture.
Modifying Terracing Dynamics: Systems like Bun terracing (raised soil beds) in Meghalaya are being structurally reinforced with localized organic mulches to protect steep slopes from the destructive velocity of flash monsoons.
(The author is the Dean, College of Agriculture (Central Agricultural University, Imphal), Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh)
