Helping PRANA reduce Northern India’s air pollution while helping farmers
Helping PRANA reduce Northern India’s air pollution while helping farmers
Every fall, the air in Punjab and other parts of Northern India fills with smog from hundreds of thousands of farmers burning leftover rice crop stubble. The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a global conservation nonprofit, seeks to address these issues comprehensively. With Bain’s help, they launched a bold, multi-year program to both reduce air pollution and drive long term farmer behavior change by empowering them economically. TNC named this initiative PRANA, short for “Promoting Regenerative And No-burn Agriculture.”
Background
Years before this case began, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) began focusing on the issue of crop stubble burning in Punjab, India. This region is home to a great deal of India’s agriculture thanks to a fertile farmland fed by five major rivers (“Punjab” means “five waters” in Hindi). Yet the long-established practice of burning the prior season’s crop stubble polluted the region’s air and was a leading cause of chronic diseases such as lung cancer, and several other issues. Conditions had also grown worse as farmers adapted their crop seasons to the changing climate. TNC estimated this practice was costing the region $35 billion annually.
TNC and Bain worked to devise a program that could help PRANA, a four-year project by TNC, achieve its ambitious targets for reducing those emissions. They sought to transition 250,000 farmers toward zero-burn cropping systems, mitigate millions of metric tons of CO2 emissions, and save hundreds of billions of liters of water. And they sought to do it while helping those farmers improve their livelihoods, which was key to ensuring the interventions endured.
The plan
In studying the existing program and situation, the Bain team surmised that the farmers and farmer alliances would have to play an essential role. Without their cooperation, change was unlikely. PRANA shared how farmers were organized, which practices would work in the local context and be well received. Bain teams also anticipated the need for the government to create financial incentives for farmers to adopt no-burn crops and practices, and that PRANA would need to engage those farmers digitally, through channels like SMS text in addition to traditional field extension programs.
Right from the beginning, the team was racing against time. The Bain team and PRANA had just four months before the next stubble-burning season commenced. They’d have very little time to design field pilots, set up monitoring and evaluation infrastructure, onboard key partners, and test that it would work. To do this, the Bain team had a lot of difficult work ahead to address several big questions with its efforts.
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Which resourcing models would PRANA use for project pilots and scaling up?
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What on-the-ground activities were required to implement the pilot?
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Which geographical parameters should determine where to pilot and where to scale?
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What metrics should they use to monitor progress, and how would they track them?
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How would they design the incentives and payouts for different stakeholders?
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How much additional budget would PRANA require?
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How would PRANA raise more funds to achieve its targets?
The approach
Bain teams conducted research and developed a model that they could then validate by visiting Punjab and interviewing farmers, service providers, and other stakeholders. It was essential to get the farmer-inclusion aspect right, and for those farmers to feel bought in. This approach also helped Bain teams prioritize which geographies to address first based on where work was already happening.
Meanwhile, the Bain team also built the corresponding program budget and identified the funding gap PRANA would need to close to reach enough farmers in time for this season. They developed an approach to using Punjab Agricultural University’s “Happy Seeder,” a no-till planter. They also integrated aspects of agri-entrepreneurship, regenerative agriculture, crop diversification, and no-burn crop alternatives while designing the program and farmer incentives.
Bain helped PRANA implement the pilot and hire new staff to support the program. Bain teams codified all they’d learned into a high-level theory of change and then provided four months of implementation support. This four-month period of intense engagement with field teams helped refine the program design based on on-ground experience and ensured that PRANA was on track to deliver intended impact.
The results
The project is ongoing, but PRANA is working on its plan to transition 250,000 farmers to no-burn substitutes. If successful, it will mitigate six million metric tons of CO2 emissions and save 500 billion liters of water—the equivalent of a midsize city.
