In Assam’s Majuli, agroecology is a lived reality. Will commercialisation make it obsolete?

“This is mani-muni (Indian pennywort),” says 16-year-old Anju, plucking a ground cover plant with small, round leaflets. “We crush its leaves and drink the juice; it’s good for digestion.” On Assam’s river island of Majuli, in the Chilakela village, Anju and five of her friends, aged 10 to 18, helped us forage ten different edible plants growing within a few feet of their homes.

Together, we cooked these foraged greens and fried fish caught from the pond behind Anju’s house, and ate it all with farm-grown rice and vegetables, homemade ber achar (jujube pickle), and masoor dal—the only item sourced from the market.

As part of an Agroecology course, I’d chosen Majuli for my field immersion (agroecology takes an ecology approach to farming, promoting sustainable use of resources and the empowerment of farmers). My classmates and I centred our fieldwork on two of Majuli’s 243 villages: Chilakela (pronounced ‘Seelakola’), a primarily Assamese village, and Malapindha, a Mising tribal village where our host organisation, Ayang Trust, works. What we found were gracious teachers of agroecology in the very homes we visited—everyday farmers living the principles we’d only studied in the coursework thus far.

After our meal at Anju’s home, the leftovers were devoured by ducks, chickens, cows, goats—even pigs—moving about freely around the homes. Each family reared at least two to three types of livestock. Their dung naturally fertilised the soil, completing a nutrient loop that would make any permaculture designer proud. Such cycles of transformation were unfolding around us all the time. In March, when we visited, the broad pathars (fields) were open grazing grounds, dotted with cattle and goats. By April, they would transform into lush, green paddy fields.

Agroecology in action

Majuli, located on the mighty Brahmaputra, is the largest river island in the world. It remains in a state of constant flux as the Brahmaputra and its tributaries (Subansiri) dance around it, eroding and depositing sediment as they flow.

As climate change makes weather on the island intense and less predictable, it leads to changing relationships with farming, even as native varieties lend a great deal of resilience against seasonal floods. Chilakela and Malapindha, in particular, are less erosion prone. Still, villagers can feel the shift; for example, mustard is no longer grown where it used to, as the soil is more wet now.

This is agroecology in action: systems built on biodiversity, requiring little external inputs, and resilient to changing conditions.

Government data suggests that roughly 90% of the island’s population is dependent on agriculture, much of which remains sustenance-oriented. Farms are typically small or marginal, with paddy being the preferred crop of choice alongside other major crops like black gram. 

“Our ancestors used to say ‘Kheti karo kaal bam’—farm the land, through ups and downs,” says Madhav, a community leader in his 30s with an entrepreneurial streak, “If all paddy was cultivated only in low-lying regions, then we could lose yield in the event of an intense flood. That’s why we plant many varieties on different types of land,” he adds. “Hali dhan like basmati, jangia, and joha are cultivated upland, while in the low-lying areas, we sow Bau dhan like negheri, kolio, and amona. Bau dhan can grow up to 8–10 feet tall, so even in deep floods, we are still able to achieve a harvest.”

This is agroecology in action: systems built on biodiversity, requiring little external inputs, and resilient to changing conditions. This resilience also shapes the community's nutrient-dense diets. Most families consume a wide diversity of foods daily: cereals and tubers, pulses, leafy greens, vegetables, and meat. Fruits like ber and seeds like pumpkin featured often in the meals we tracked. Nearly everything was grown or foraged locally. Every home was surrounded by 30–40 plant species—trees, shrubs, herbs—some cultivated, many wild, all useful: edible, medicinal, timber, aesthetic. This is true food sovereignty, the kind most consumers can only dream of.

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An embrace—and skepticism of—hybridity

Poroshmita, a 20-year-old Assamese woman from the Chilakela village, has decided to delay her marriage by 2–3 years. “I’ve prioritised saving money first,” she says, as she shows us the pickles, embroidered sarees, crochet work and stitched clothes she sells to earn a living, “At least Rs 1–2 lakh is needed to cover wedding expenses.” Weddings, funerals, and festivals—once modest occasions—now come with heavy financial burdens. The price of everyday living, too, has risen. Traditional bamboo-and-mud houses are being replaced with pakka cement structures. “To build a decent house, you need Rs 10–20 lakh,” says Madhav. “In 70% of households, at least one son is working in Coimbatore, Hyderabad, or Chennai.”

Though villages like Malapindha and Chilakela have remained self-sufficient in terms of food production, the rising costs of gadgets like phones, vehicles, and private education in particular are pressing. “My sons attend a private school,” says Rezu, a diligent farmer in his 40s. “The annual fees alone are 1.5 lakh. Then the costs of books, hostel stays, transport… I sell my goats, cows, and fish whenever I need cash.”

Despite easy marketing, hybrid varieties lacked taste and resilience, and have earned limited favour in Majuli.

In the nearby flood-prone village of Bhakat Chapori, government-backed commercial farming has taken hold over the past five years. “These crops need a lot of care,” says 40-year-old Anil, as he stands in a field gleaming with black plastic mulch (to retain moisture and prevent weeds from growing). On one side, a thousand bhut jolokias (ghost pepper chillies). On the other, watermelons. “See this discoloration?” he says, pointing to a leaf, “This deficiency can only be fixed by chemical fertilisers.”

Under a brand-new solar pump on Anil’s farm, sat rows of plastic bottles—one of them containing Roundup, a herbicide restricted or banned in many countries for its carcinogenic effects. When asked about his earnings, Anil says, “Sometimes a lot, sometimes nothing. Last year, I put in Rs 5 lakh and earned Rs 12 lakh.” 

Despite easy marketing, hybrid varieties lacked taste and resilience, and have earned limited favour in Majuli. As he points to a hybrid variety of guava, Madhav underscores how trees like it have been ‘created’. “They won’t grow without chemicals.” As it is true across the world, high yield crops cultivated on this island, too, require a high degree of inputs. “If a goat eats a leaf, the plant dies. Our local guava? It survives and keeps growing.”

Rajib, a middle-aged farmer based in Malapindha, shows us two brinjal patches growing side-by-side—one local, one hybrid. “I sowed them at the same time,” he says. The hybrid plants had barely germinated while the local ones flourished. Hybrids also needed more water in Majuli’s relatively dry winter—a major constraint.

“I grow hybrid varieties to sell in the market and earn an income,” says Sumonto Boruah, a seasoned, middle-aged farmer, “But at home, we prefer to eat our local variety of bitter gourd—it’s tastier!” In a small market survey we conducted in Garmur, a district town in Majuli, with inputs from 60 respondents, customers unanimously preferred local produce. “I don’t buy off-season vegetables,” one buyer told us, “They’re not good for us. Local, fresh vegetables and greens are like medicine.”

To enable better incomes and earning potential, our host NGO Ayang Trust supports Lekope, a farmer-producer organisation which works with 3000 farmers to market local crops like black rice, joha rice and foxtail millet. This millet has nearly vanished due to its laborious processing, despite its high nutritional value. Now, thanks to Lakope’s orders, a handful of farmers have started reintroducing it. Ayang also trains women to make pickles, cakes, and chips, helping them start small enterprises.

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The real threat: systemic change, not local choice

Madhav is of the opinion that Majuli’s socio-economic backwardness stems from the failure to market what is local and abundant. “We’ve failed to market our own products,” he rues. To test whether local vegetables could find buyers, our student group sourced surplus pumpkins, gourds, and a rainbow of greens from the homes we visited and set up a small stall in Garmur.   

Many customers we encountered had their own backyard gardens, but there was a significant minority that did not have space or time, who purchased most of our produce. “I’m happy to pay Rs 500 weekly for hygienically produced, organic groceries,” says Bipen, a middle-aged white-collar professional. Our investment of Rs 1800 resulted in a Rs 500 profit—a modest but meaningful sign of potential.

The reality unfolding in Majuli can be explained against the larger context of trends observed across India. Farming itself has become economically unviable for many farmers. “Primary productivity is declining [due to loss of soil fertility and ground water]. Meanwhile, farmers face rising costs due to privatised education and healthcare, making cash incomes a necessity. Yet, agriculture receives only 2.7% of the national budget, largely as Direct Benefit Transfers. These do little to build shared assets like watershed systems that could support long-term climate resilience,” says Dr Dinesh Abrol, a policy expert who held forth on the subject during one of our course lectures. The result is a system where farmers bear the burden, but decisions—about factors like seeds and subsidies—are shaped by a government-corporate nexus far removed from the field. 

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The push to commercialise agriculture has also come at a cost to nutritional self-sufficiency. “We’ve become dependent on imports for oilseeds and pulses,” notes Dr Richa Kumar, an associate professor at IIT Delhi who researches agriculture and nutrition. “Today, over half of our pulses and oilseeds are imported. This is because the government procures rice and wheat at scale but doesn’t prioritise other crops,” she shares. Ironically, even these staples are declining in quality. A 2023 study by Debnath et al. says that the, “nutrients profile [of modern rice and wheat] shows a downward trend in concentrations of essential and beneficial elements, but an upward [trend] in toxic elements in [the] past 50 y[ears].”

Ayang Trust has attempted to support Majuli’s farmers if they opt for high-value, high-yielding vegetables and non-local fruits. Dharamjeet, the livelihoods coordinator at the NGO, says that this support has been offered keeping in mind what the future may bring for Majuli. “Soon, there will be a highway and a bridge passing through these villages, connecting Majuli to Arunachal. Industries and rice mills will follow, there will be massive land grabs,” he warns, “What will farmers have to hold on to their land?” From our conversations with the NGO and our field visits, it was clear that their intervention—introducing Tezpur litchi and L49 guava—had only a lukewarm impact. This reflects a pattern: relying on non-native, high-input, market-oriented varieties instead of finding innovations that would secure fair prices for indigenous, nutritious crops.

Majuli, buffered by its inaccessibility and strong food culture, has held on. Reachable only by ferry, it has not yet been exposed to the takeover of supermarket culture or the presence of MNCs, or even the food procurement regimes that mainland areas are accustomed to. For context, electricity reached the village of Chilakela in 2010. But the change is seeping in. In Chilakela, we laid out local seeds before children aged 4 to 19. Only Radhika, age 9, could name them all. Most couldn’t tell a pumpkin from a sponge gourd, or distinguish between the small and large varieties of ridge gourd. Even Paban, a sharp 20-year-old, struggled to identify the rice varieties his mother cultivates.

“Often the stress and the solution is not in agriculture,” says Anshuman Das, a Lead Expert in agroecology and food systems at aid agency Welthungerhilfe. “We have to zoom out… If the need of the community in Majuli’s villages is better education, we need to address this. This is a part of agroecology—to enable the community to take part in decision-making mechanisms. They may have to participate in gram panchayat development planning, engage in advocacy with their government bodies for better education and health care,” he says.

Right now, no one tells the people of Majuli that their food systems—local, resilient, and deeply nourishing—are worth emulating.

Across India, several experiments are underway to restore lands damaged by chemical farming, revive indigenous seeds, and build fairer markets for farmers. But for these efforts to truly take root, our institutions and social imagination must value the promise rural India holds. Right now, no one tells the people of Majuli that their food systems—local, resilient, and deeply nourishing—are worth emulating. Instead, agricultural universities promote chemical sprays for fragile hybrid varieties. And yet, quietly, the people of Majuli carry on, saving seeds, sharing knowledge, and honouring food with celebration.

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