 First of all, thank you everyone for taking our time and becoming part of the webinar. This webinar is part of Partners in Prosperity's multilingual webinar series where we are trying to mobilize and spend awareness about water management, importance of water conservation and how to develop techniques where water can be managed well in agriculture. My name is Shrestha Sharma and I am working as a coordinator in policy impact with Partners in Prosperity. Now, I will just introduce you to a project called VAPRO, which we have been doing from last five years now. So under this water productivity project or VAPRO, we are essentially trying to create aggregate value chains where the rice is produced using water-efficient farming techniques and the procured rice is exported to our market partners like Co-op, Mars and LT Foods. Anyone who would like to know more about it can speak to me personally. Going ahead into the discussion, I will just introduce to our speakers. First we have Ms. Laoke Kokmans. Thank you so much, Laoke, for being part of the webinar. She is heading the global sustainable sourcing part at Mars Food currently. She has been working in years of project management as well as I would ask you to kindly mute your videos. They are having a nice meeting with my girl. She has been working in project management as well as developing sustainable sourcing strategies. Thank you, Laoke, for joining us. And Dr. Kamal Vata has still not joined us. We cannot just say, as of now, moving to the next speaker, we have Dr. Sudhir Yadav. Thank you so much, Sudhir, for being part of today's session. He is a senior scientist at IRRI, International Rice Research Institute. Currently, he is leading the theme of environmentally sustainable methods in rice-based systems. Then we have Mr. Raskesh Sharma. He is the Director of the Central Water Commission, Ministry of Water Resources, River Development, under River Development Congratulation, Government of India. And as he said, his new presenters shall be his own and not necessarily representing the government or his department's opinions. Moving ahead with the discussion, I will just give the lead to Mr. Sharma now. And we'll discuss the first question, which is, what is the importance of water in agriculture and how we can manage it? Dr. Sharma, over to you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Answer to the question, what is the importance of water in agriculture? I would like to start from a little, a little, with a little perspective. At the time of independence, our population was only 33 crores, 330 million. Now we are 1.3 billion. And the agriculture issue was such that at that time, we were not finding it possible to feed our own people. Now we have done a lot of improvement, a lot of management issues, they are still left. Because you see what was correct at that time, the Green Revolution, now things have changed. Now we have become almost the same population, but we were then at that time. And there are some serious quality issues, quantity issues of water. Now to the question, what is the importance of water in agriculture? Now India is such a country that whatever we have, whatever resources, whatever inputs we have at our disposal, we must leverage them. We must leverage them for our benefit. And what do we have here is water. There are some countries which are quite water deficient. For example, in Israel, the per-unit water availability is less than 100. And we are having currently it is 1,500 approximately. Mr. Shahan, we can't hear you, I think there is some technical issue. Hello. Hello. Yes, yes, sir, we can hear you now. Okay. So, whatever, what is the, coming back to the question, what is the importance of water in agriculture? In agriculture, water is very much important because it is one of the few resources which we have at our disposal, which we can leverage to feed up people, to keep our country stable and prosperous and all the rest. So we cannot straight away discount water and we cannot also leave aside the issues of environment, about quality and all. So what we will really need is to have a multi-fiscate approach. We cannot, in my opinion, in my personal opinion, we cannot straight away neglect our supply side, supply side results or supply side our answers and either we can neglect our demand side options. We have to manage, we have to do a tight balancing act. So I think this is how I would like to conclude is that we will have to manage it by making a very fine, a very delicate balance between our demand side solution and supply side solution. We cannot straight away be, remain dependent upon one of them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Sharma. Thank you so much for sharing your views. You're absolutely correct that how they should be balanced, well maintained between how much we're demanding and how much we're producing against what resources are involved because often what's the debate is that are we really selling our crops or for that matter rice or are we really selling water? So if we manage our water well, then of course that can be looked after. Thank you so much. I would request you to mute your video. Coming to the next question, which is again one of the very important questions is understanding the basics of what we're trying to do and what is sustainable agriculture really and right now today we have with us water and environment group from Uttarakhand who has done extensive work in developing water management techniques. And we also have farmers in Haryana who are trying to replicate this model. But before heading into them and listening to their questions and views, I would request Laokit to present our views on this second question of what is the agricultural or sustainable agriculture and why do we need it? Thank you so much for the opportunity to share more about what is sustainable agriculture and and why do we need it and maybe from the perspective of a global big company. I would like to share my screen that you need to give me permission Sharma. Okay. Thank you. If you can see my screen, please let me know. We can't see your screen. You cannot? Yeah. What did you share? Did you share? If you can see it, please let me know. We can't see your screen. Yes. You can? Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Excellent. Okay. So I work for Mars Food. We're part of the big Mars Inc. company and we are owners of the biggest global rice brands. And today I would like to share a little bit background like why sustainable rice becomes more and more important in countries like Europe, the US. That's why it's also important for companies like Mars. So first of all, as Mars family is a company and we find it very important that we can make an impact. So it's important we can drive change. We can also have an impact for people, for planets. Can everyone go on mute, please? Yeah. I think you're a good number. Thank you. And driving impact is key. Also we identified within Mars our top products and we can see that rice, which is using 40% of the world's irrigation available, as business we should act upon water reduction. So that's something we do. Also why sustainable rice is important. It's also important that we can source basmati. It's growing. It's growing in Europe. It's growing in the state. People want to eat this fragrant rice. So it's important we can source from India. So it's important we can source quality and health and safety rice. That's always number one. But we also think in the future. So also we want to source our basmati rice. So we need a long-term supply. Well, if water equifers are dropping, we need to act upon this. We need to think in the future. For that reason, we are now partnering in the VAPRO program. We really want to have a water stewardship approach to ensure we also have basmati rice in 10 years time. Even though we are very small, of course, but for that reason, we're partnering with our suppliers, but we also are very active in platforms as well, like the Sustainable Rice platform. Another aspect, like why is sustainability important? It's important for our own associates, our own employees in Mars. And of course, we also need to change it into growth in the business. So for instance, what now you see is very important. Consumers, they want to know where is their food coming from. It's called the trust chain. They want to know where it's grown, where it's coming from. And we do this, for instance, by putting stories on the back of the pack and we show how much water is saved by farmers that grow great basmati rice. So having this in mind, this is more like to say the why why it's so important that we work on sustainability, thinking about the future. Yeah. Then as a business, we have set goals. So we said we can't do it on our own. So we remember and take a leadership in the rice platform. And I think that's that's also something we're now working on in India. We have plans maybe to set up a national chapter about Sustainable Rice Platform. We also said we want to source rice from the Sustainable Rice Platform standard. That's one way how you can measure that farms are growing sustainable rice, which is key. But we also say this is not enough. So we also say farmers, they need income. Otherwise, it cannot join a profit from any program. So we need to improve yields, have better access to finance. Think also, let's say, how farms can sell their products like straw. So we need to work on income. And today's topic is about water use. So in high water stress areas, we need to reduce the water use. And of course, this is all linked to each other. We cannot only use. So we will be. Okay, I think there's some technical issue. We can't show you properly. You can do it all by partners. We should be in. OK, OK, should I. Did you hear my previous slides about the goals? We could show it properly. Yeah. Should I do it again? Yeah, if you can, that would be really nice. OK, OK, yeah. So as a company, we have set goals. And first of all, we acknowledge we cannot do it on our own. So for that reason, we have joined the Sustainable Rice Platform, both the platform as well as adopting the rice standards. We also really supporting that in India, we set up a national chapter so that actors can be united in advocating for sustainable rice. We in our goals, we don't only see it as SRP is the only one solution. We also work on income and water use. So that means we need to work on better work capital for rice growers, increasing yields, lowering input costs. As well, we see it. We need to work on water stewardship and all the goals, of course, are interlinked together as something we should embed in a similar framework. Could you hear me now? Yeah, we are with you. OK, OK, good. Yes. We can't do it on our own, so we're very active with a lot of different partners we're having who know this context very well. And we work closely with our suppliers. We are very advocating that we work through Miller associations to really drive sector change. Then maybe the final slides. What we always see that we need to to think about the future long term view. So we need to think how can we change the system? So our dream, our vision is Haryana should be an attractive area that we can source high quality basmati. Yeah, it's sufficient water in the future. But that only starts with if rice farmers, they are entrepreneurs, they think as entrepreneurs, so grow rice and wheat in a system. And as well, also farmers, they become stewards themselves of the environment. Yeah, they need this well functioning agri-servic system, so good covenants should be there. There should be a good private sector supporting them. So what we do now, we work with our partners on having a good rice value chain. We need to work on adoption of climate smart practices. And we need to improve the enabling environment. So the policy parts. Yeah, yeah. I would stop here and then give it to the next speaker. Yeah, thank you, Lauki. In fact, you've raised very important points that says that farmers have to start working as water stewards really. However, my question really is as a farmer, as someone who is directly working on field, when someone has to make a choice, they need to totally understand the business model. So when you say the farmers have to become entrepreneurs, they also have to find the utility of choosing what deficient techniques over the conventional farming techniques, so if you have anything to add on that part. Yeah, I so agree that the business case should be very clear. So we always see the income going hands in hands with water. So, for instance, we work now on a pre-finance model together with Rabobank. So that farmers can do, for instance, laser levelling as a technique, which also will increase yields. As well, it will reduce water as well. So that's just one example, as well, we look at, for instance, how we can use the byproducts of rice. For instance, they sell the straw. So we always need to think through a long-term model as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely correct. Now I would like to open our floor to for questions to the farmers who are sitting directly in Haryana. In fact, it is important that you raise the point of Haryana because 86 percent of the exported rice is alone coming from Haryana, the whole of the country. So I would request our my colleague in sitting in Haryana, Pavitriji, to kindly open his video. And maybe we can hear from what farmers have to say and say or some questions. What is that? What are you talking about? I am able to hear you carefully. What do you want to say? What is the importance of? Now, give me a minute. I'm trying to translate and understand. What? Hello. Yes, Pavitriji, tell me. I think that's some confusion. Pavitriji, maybe I want to use the chat section so that we can read the question from there. I decide. So the question from the farmer is how can rain water be conserved? How can rain water be conserved? How can a farmer conserve rain water? Okay. Thank you, Pavitriji, for your question. So, lucky and Mr. Sharma, who spoke a while back, I would request anyone of you who would like to take this question. I think Sharma, Jake, not with us anymore. So, Lucky, if you would like to address this question, but how rain water can be used. Actually, I think Sudhir might be the best one to answer because he's more the water specialist of Erie. I can give my thoughts for collecting rain water. I'd better leave it to the more water specialist. Yeah. Dr. Sudhir, if you would... We can't hear you, Dr. Sudhir, if you can maybe try to unmute. Dr. Sudhir, we can't hear you. I think there's some... Can you hear me now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so sorry, we did see you. Yeah, speaking to you. Yeah. It's all technology. So thank you very much and I'm very glad to see all farmers and just to inform them. I'm also from Haryana. So that's a very kind of good moment to see people from my state. The question which has been asked and for farmer, I'm sitting in Manila working for an international organization for RISE. So the question which has been asked, I think the question is not how to use rain water. I'm looking at the chat box question is how to help in raising the groundwater table. Which is kind of a related question So there's two parts. First, we need to understand why groundwater is going down. So that's the first part and the second part is how we can help. So there has been a lot of research done by universities, by ICR center on how you can capture rain water and how that can be kind of linked to the aquifers. So basically there has been work done by different centers where at the corner of their field, they kind of install a bore well if you want to call it and that act as a water harvesting and the rain water goes directly to the aquifer. So the first part is that by that, whatever runoff is happening that goes to your aquifer. But the more importantly thing is that the degree with which we can recharge the groundwater that is still less than the rate which we are extracting the water. So I think we need to also control the extraction part that how we will reduce our extraction so that the replacement rate can be reduced. So briefly I'll stop here. Thank you so much, Sudeer for sharing your views with us. And what you say is it's very important that how some techniques which has to be introduced on ground needs to be done. And just moving to the next question which we have from Uttarakhand is what techniques can be adopted in Rabi Grab management where we are dependent on ground water sources? So if any of our speakers would like to answer this question, I mean, Dr. Sudeer, since you are this expert person in rice, would you again take this question? Yeah, so the question is not for rice, that's for Rabi season. And it's very, very interesting that how we look from the system perspective, not only from rice or Rabi season. There has been a lot of work done in eastern India, especially in eastern Uttar Pradesh, especially they are, I'm sure some of the farmers are familiar about rice-eated rice and then not for rice, but then they go for early seeding of wheat to capture the residual soil moisture. With this small decision about what we call window operation, you can reduce one irrigation. So there's a lot of work going on how in eastern Uttar Pradesh, basically we talk about two to three irrigation, maximum two irrigation. So if you can, with system thinking, if you can capture the residual moisture from rice, starting early with rice, with rice-eated rice, and then capturing the residual moisture, going with, that's not in eastern UP, but a lot of work in Punjab, Haryana is going on using straw as a mulch. So with happy seed, a lot of work is going on in Haryana, but that's not much in Uttar Pradesh. In Uttar Pradesh, I think there's a lot of scope to go for early planting of wheat and using the residual moisture of rice rather than wasting it. Yeah, thank you so much, Dr. Sudhir, for telling us how the byproducts could also be used. We have a couple of questions coming over, and we would like our speakers to answer them. Unfortunately, we didn't have Dr. Bhattavidas. Nevertheless, we could go forward and move on towards the third question. We would have these questions answered in the next session. We would close the question on session for now, and then move ahead to the third question of today's presentation, which is, how can technology be used in improvising agricultural practices? So, Dr. Sudhir, if you can enlighten us with your views. Sure, and I think this will also help to address some of the questions which are coming, which are indeed very interesting. So, when we talk about how technology can be used to provide agricultural practices, I think we need to think about what we mean by technologies. People see technology from different perspectives. Technology can be per se a kind of practice, the tools or the recommendation. The kind of enabling tools to ease the decision making. And technology can be also in terms of catalyzing the adoption of improved practices. So, it depends on how we define the technology. And I'll briefly talk about all three. So, when we say about technology, so people generally say technology as something new, a new product. Motions are coming like drip irrigations and the law of commencing about laser leveling. So, it depends on what is our purpose. If our purpose is kind of applying the less irrigation water, then we can go with the technology like laser leveling. So, laser leveling will basically what will, it will help that the amount of water which you applied, whether you apply like five centimeter standing water, 10 centimeter, whatever you apply to reach to that level, the water quantity required will be less. And I think at least in India, there has been sufficient adoption of laser leveling a lot in Punjab Haryana, but now it's picking in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar a lot. And there is a clear visible benefit of laser leveling in terms of reducing the water and increasing the yield. But then also, if there are other technology like if you want to reduce or you want to increase the interval between two irrigations. So, how frequently you are applying irrigation and then the technology like alternate wetting and drying, which is again quite famous now in South Asia that you should have continuous flooding. You can dry your field to certain level and there's a simple tool to do that. But then we also talk about technology where you can reduce the amount of water, but you can't reduce the frequency. So it's a frequent application of water that is drip. So in drip, we have a technology where the amount of water can be significantly reduced, but you need to apply it like more or less daily because it meet the airport transportation demand. So the point here is it depends on what are the challenges in the reason. Similarly, when it's come to water, it's not only water per se, it's also energy. In Punjab and Haryana, most of the pumps are on electricity. As we go down in eastern side, there is a lot of diesel-operated pump and then it comes to like how we can reduce the energy footprints also. And there are different solutions, especially in the coastal regions, there has been a lot of adoption of axial flow pump compared to centrifugal pump where your energy footprints can be significantly reduced. Or there has been a lot of projects now started by government of India on solar power. So it's kind of green energy using the green energy. This is one lens using irrigation or energy. The other lens is in terms of improving the adaptation, capacity of the farmer. And in that one, some of the farmer ask about water harvesting. So basically, if you can harvest the water that improve your capacity to adapt, like if you are going through drought, so you can apply supplementary irrigation. And there is a lot of work done on crop estubition method, like dry seeded rice. But if you can allow me to share the screen, Sreesta, can you hear me? Okay, thank you. Can you see my screen? I think you are mute. So I'm assuming that you are able to see. Yes, yes, I'm able to see. I'm sorry, we can't see your screen. Yeah. Okay, can you see now? Not really. We can't see your screen. You need to click twice on, like... And then you need to do a little more permission. Let me try. I think you need to click twice and then you can... Yeah, let's see. Yeah, now we can... Okay, you can see. So basically, what went to different screen? So I'm not sure with the screen you are looking at. All right, let's... Okay, let's keep it simple. So what I mean here is that we generally, as a researcher, we generally open a lot of technology to farmers and sometimes made them confused. Sometimes we are very much technology driven. And in real sense, I think what farmers need help on is making a decision. That what are the best way to make the decision, what technology can be picked and technology is not only about following laser levelling or not. The decision is whether laser levelling is required or not. Or after how many years laser levelling is required, whether for your system drip is a good option so maybe you are getting enough rain, you target the system gain. So there is a lot of work which is required in terms of helping farmers in decision making. And Lauki was talking about enabling environment and this is similar to that one where you invest on building the capacity of the system. That is also with policy lens. But then now there are a lot of ICT IoT based tool which are very powerful in terms of picking the right technology which are suitable for a particular reason. Farmers in Haryana, their questions are different than farmers in Uttar Pradesh and farmers in Bihar. So we cannot fit one size to all. And it's very, very important that we use now the tools in terms of leaving it with farmers rather than telling that this is best for you. Leaving with them to pick what is best for them because they are the kind of best people to understand their agro environment, understand their challenge. And I think what we can do is helping them in terms of exploring the capital area of technologies and telling them the pros and cons of different technologies. And then these tools can also help to catalyze the chains which are required. I can see that it's, there's one more slide which is basically saying that we have technologies but and we know the stakeholder need but technology generally doesn't reach the stakeholders. And that's the gap which we need to fill that how, what kind of now tools we can develop so that we can reach as much as near to farmers. I'll stop here for now. All right. Thank you so much Dr. Sudhir. You're absolutely correct in how we have been. We do need to enable the farmers to make it informed choice. And if, and this enabling factor could have multiple values. One could be to give them the appropriate information of what are the kind of facilities available, the kind of videos or just share the screen. Or even at the part of the government of what, in terms of what kind of initiatives and the schemes are available, for example, subsidies. We have been involved in this part of enabling farmers by training them in various kinds of farm, a few water efficient farming techniques. And one of which was water stewardship, which was being done under our water productivity project. So, Jyotsna from Marut Rakhant office is connected to us and we have three and four Jalsakis who were the community persons working directly with the farmers on how they developed and also made sure that the farmers know what they're doing. And also explaining them that how they can implement these from last many years. So, maybe we could hear her views and also hear directly from some of our Jalsakis if you would allow me. Jyotsna, can you hear us? Yes, yes, Jyotsna. Yes, yes, Jyotsna. We would like to hear and just before heading into that, we're really glad that we have our partners from Pakistan joining us for the webinar who are implementing the water productivity project in Pakistan which we have been doing in India. So, we would like to hear their views as well sometime. And Jyotsna, can you tell us about the experience of working within the community, enabling the farmers in how Jalsakis work directly on ground? Yes, Jalsakis have been working in the water productivity project and they have been monitoring the water use in these technologies. Actually, all these technologies have been demonstrated in the field areas, SRI, AWD and intercropping. So, Jalsakis' goal was to monitor the label of water and irrigation during the past three years. And as the results we had analyzed, it has been noticed that 25% of water saving has been, 23 to 25% water saving has been experienced through these practices. So, Jalsakis, other than this water monitoring part, they have created water and environment groups in the region of NANITA District where our project is going on. So, the water and environment main purpose is to monitor and maintain the water infrastructure and aware community members towards water use, sustainable water use. Yeah, in fact, for everyone, we have been successfully able to mobilize and train 4,500 farmers in a project. And how this word-of-mouth works among the farmer's community is that when someone, a village or say a particular block is being trained or being told about what is happening, it slowly spreads among the other farmers. And again, what Laopu is talking about is that if you present them with a lucrative business model, which is that if they're producing water-efficient or maybe SRI standards rise, that can be easily exported and given at a good price. If I am correct, okay. Yes, yeah. Absolutely. Well, since we're done with the, what the speakers have to say, but we still have one question left, I would request a VAPRO partners from Pakistan if they would want to. And there's online questions as well, like what are the low-cost technology that can be adopted by farmers without even increasing costs? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you would like to go ahead and do answers, because this is important to hear and then we can go ahead into questions. So Ali has joined us from Pakistan. Ali, can you hear us? He is among the VAPRO partners. I think there's some technical error in the country. Anyway, let's go ahead. And take answers one questions one by one. So can drip irrigation system be used in bad cultivation? That's something, a reoccurring question. And I think Dr. Sudeep, you would like to give your opinion. So yes, definitely there has been a lot of work done of using drip, you know, in rice. I'm familiar with the work was done in Haryana also in Karnal. Work was done in Modi Pramal, so work was done. However, there's another question that can be kind of save water without additional investment, you know. So that's kind of the scenario that when it comes to the paddy cultivation, there's initial investment with the drip and the technology is still kind of settling. I'm speaking from my perspective that from, it's definitely the research done, but for adoption of farmer, it's still a bit expensive. So that now the many private companies are working on low cost drip irrigation system. But the adoption for drip is still low in, very low in rice, because they don't see kind of the output against the investment. So the marginal cost is very high. While in a lot of rain fed area in Uttar Pradesh, we have farmer from there, they have started to use this low cost drip irrigation in the dry season for growing vegetables. And there's a, like, it's a very high profitable system. So it all depends on, as a technology, it's excellent. But when farmer pick a technology, it's not only from technology perspective, they look it from different lens. So, and that this depends on the whole system, that what kind of system you have, and then whether drip is a potential choice for you or not. Yeah, yeah, of course. In fact, there have been, we have been the project which will be working in Haryana. There have been discussions whether we could implement drip irrigation in paddy cultivation and see if it can work there. But we're also considering the factor that it has been done before, but in different kinds of atmosphere and also the soil. And I'm skeptical about if the kind of soil will make any difference because hilly areas will be different in comparison to maybe areas like Haryana. So no, it depends on, there are two different things. So one is when you schedule irrigation and how you schedule irrigation, whether you use drip or you use flood, that is how, when is interval and when will take care of soil type. So when in drip irrigation, you consider the evapotranspiration. So evaporation is from the soil, transpiration is from the plants. So you consider that one and you schedule the irrigation. But my simple kind of question or suggestion to farmers, and I'm thinking more like a farmers being grown up in Haryana, like if farmers are at least some progressive farmers are starting to think for drip. So which means they are only thinking to dry their paddy field. If they can dry their paddy field with surface irrigation, they can save a lot. I'm not saying that drip is good. It can further increase the saving. But in terms of what low hanging opportunity which we have with us is saving this water which we are pumping from the groundwater. And that is really, really kind of alarming the situation in Punjab and Haryana. So first, I think the big message is that if they believe drip is good, that means rice can be grown as like other cereals like wheat. So they can change it in their surface irrigation system also. And then it's a step change then they can adopt probably drip at later stage. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Dr. Sudeer. Of course, what you said definitely can be done. So this question which is a bit polluted with just giving the gist is really that what are the policy level initiatives that can guide water stewardship at a multi-level? So it can be implemented. So really what the question is trying to understand is what kind of policy change is required when water stewardship can be implemented very well in all like in regional setting in a state level setting or say a national and even international setting if Lauki would like to comment and maybe later Dr. Sudeer would give his own opinion on it. Yeah, I'm not, let's say the expert of course in the policy part because this is, I think maybe Sharma, you even might be yourself able to answer. Of course, like having improved policies, having incentives for rice growers is essential. So I spoke earlier about the enabling environment. What we see for instance in other regions where the government might have incentives for collecting rainwater, for providing subsidies for using drip irrigation that's one rule. Then of course also policies in place where maybe there might be a restriction of farmers using water. In Pakistan there are debates whether actually water should be paid by farmers. So it just depends on the context of course. Yeah, yeah. But sis, you are someone who can speak for the market. I would like to know your views in what capacity the markets can influence the policy. What kind of changes can be done from your end? For example, the points raised before was how they can increase price when we are working with SRP. So something. Yeah, so if we talk about premiums, as Mars we need high quality Basmati. So we always pay for a quality premium. That already helps farmers to increase their income. Then of course we work with our suppliers who have agronomists who provide coaching to farmers. So every two weeks they will receive guidance how to better grow the rice. Which also increased yields by 15%. Of course we also work on improving let's say better market. So market route to market, transport, lowering transport costs. And then of course if they grow SRP rice, we won't expect we pay a premium like what they do in organics. But we would rather see by all the interventions that farmers can benefit by growing rice in a more sustainable way. Yeah. And if I can add to Laokit's point in terms of incentivize farmers for kind of climate smart practices. One of the debate which is going on is on providing incentives to farmers for carbon credit which has been already started in investment world but in ACIT is not introduced. And this is at macro level at country level. And country hold different kind of funds. One is which they can access is green climate funds which can be can circulate down for to provide additional incentive for reducing the water footprint and the carbon footprint. So as you know that rice is one of the major source of methane emission. So it can be sometimes direct, sometimes indirect. So if they use the water efficiently, they not only save water but they also reduce the global warming potential. So people of Haryana know that what is happening in Delhi in winter, you know. So there's a lot of work need to be done in terms of how we do, how we improve the egg practices. But more importantly, what is the pull mechanism? And I think we need to think out of the box to incentivize farmers through premium rice, sporting price or through these new incentive mechanism of carbon footprints. Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much Dr. Sudee for adding your reviews and of course methane emissions are very important side effects of global price. And if we are contributing towards not generating that kind of an emission into the atmosphere considering Delhi's India's pollution level, there will be a good advantage in terms of the ecological contribution from the farmer's end. But that this consumption always comes to me as speaking from off from, you know, putting my feet in a farmer's shoe is that why is that everything burdened over me? Why do I have to need to make all the difficult choices? Because essentially what matters to me is growing and just getting the better price. So if you would like to comment on that, I will be okay if you will speak. I would not say it's always about the price. It's more what we say the more crop per acre. So productivity, that's actually key one. Also what we see a lot in the system that a lot of rice growers are dependent on the middlemen to have loans, they need to pre-finance their input costs. And that actually is a huge burden on the final net income from rice. So we now might be working more on pre-finance, which can reduce 20% of their financial, of their input costs, which are spent by paying 14 to 24% of taxes. So rather just having the premium discussions, I would rather go in this route, thinking about pre-financing, dependency on middlemen and whether we can also play a role in this. I'm keen to hear because I know it's very challenging as a lot of rice growers also need the middlemen as they provide a bank not only for agriculture but also for education and other let's say loans as well. Thank you, Lauki. Adding to that, I think one of the participants with us is Dr. Sathiv Singh, who is director of ICID, international organization for irrigation and drainage. Maybe he would be an expert person to add comments on how changes can be done at a policy level. Dr. Sathiv, if you would like to add to a discussion, if you would unmute yourself, you can hear you. Yes, Dr. Sathiv, you can't hear you. Okay, are you able to hear me now? Yeah, maybe I don't want to spoil the party, but this morning I was reading the newspaper and interestingly, there is a study by IHPRI, International Food Policy Research Institute, which says that the crop burning in Haryana, Punjab alone costs US$30 billion per year to the Indian economy. And I don't know, I think that's a number which is very close to the total agricultural exports of India. Basically, the Punjab-Haryana reason is not the acroecological zone for rice farming. And it was introduced because of the Bhaktanangar dam, which provided sufficient water. So people says to the cash crops like the Basmati rice, and which is an export commodity. So maybe I had been studying this problem for the last two, three years. And it seems that Punjab and Haryana receives only 40% of the Mansoon rain that the West Bengal and the North Eastern part of India, which are more suitable for rice farming, receive. And I don't see any research which gives a direction that how we can grow fragrant rice like Basmati in the Northeast parts of India, which receives adequate Mansoon rainfall. And in the Punjab-Haryana region, I'm not against technology. I mean, I'm an engineer myself. And drip and all these things can always make the water use efficiency much higher. But should we not be practicing something which is acroecologically or ecologically sustainable in the long run? That's my question to the experts here. Of course, there is a need for improving the economy of farmers, improving their income. But are there other ways which we should think about? Or there are other options, policy options, which can incentivize the shift in farming practices, making it more ecologically sustainable in the long run? Yes. Thank you, Dr. Sahade for sharing your views. I know we are short on time, but we have two questions which are still left unanswered. If you could keep it on the table now. The first one is, how can rice water stewardship affect the quality and quantity of the agricultural produce? So essentially, what is the benefit of water stewardship? So if you would like to hear on it, if Dr. Sahade would say. So basically, whenever we talk about water saving, people sometimes take it as like we are cutting off significantly. There is a difference between water requirement of crop versus water applied to the crop. And there, basically, it's all about the intelligence about like how much water need to be applied. I want to quickly also make the point about what Sahade was saying that I also believe in terms of the whole window of operation. Thinking about how you can make a decision based on your agroecological condition and based on your water availability. So some of the, like I know the work which Mark's Food is doing, their best management practice is that the climate smart practices which will not affect your quantity, that may improve your quality, but that will definitely not affect your quality. So it's win-win situation, which basically we are talking here rather than reducing quantity and quality. Yeah, absolutely. It makes also a lot of sense because if we are conserving water and managing water, not only are we making an ecologically better choice, but we're also in terms of the market making a better opportunity as raised by now, how premium is also being paid by companies. And for that matter, I know that Mars has been paying premiums, LT Foods and other market leaders are also paying premium for better maintained rice. Just this last question which is being left unanswered is what are the low-cost technologies that can be adopted by farmers without increasing cost? Again, I think it depends on, I always go back to that, what are the conditions rather than saying that this technology can fit very well to you. We have seen a very, very high impact. And again, Sadevi was talking about this IFP study and another IFP study in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where the early planting of wheat followed by early planting of, sorry, early planting of rice followed by early planting of wheat was able to make significant change in water productivity because they were using rain efficiently. So it's not always that you need to try a new rocket. It's sometimes the decisions which you make around the production system. There are a series of technologies which can be adopted, but again, I would come back to that. It all depends on what are the conditions. And accordingly, we can suggest the appropriate technologies. Thank you so much, Dr. Sadevi for sharing your time and your views with us. I think we're just ending the webinar, it's already 3.32. And due to some internet problem, we also don't have a Laoke with us as of now. So first of all, I would like to thank everyone for sharing their views and the participants from Hadyana Uddrakh in Pakistan and different parts of the country.