Incentives for Experimenting with Sustainable Intensification: Can Direct Payments to Farmers Help Diversify the Cropping Systems in South India?

The sustainable intensification of cropping systems with legume species enhances the system resilience to climate change, maintains soil health, and increases food production and income from existing farmland while lowering the environmental footprint. However, the production of many nutritious legume crops has been stagnant in India. How can farmers be incentivized to include legume crops in their farming system? Local agro-ecological and institutional factors and household characteristics determine farmer adoption of sustainable intensification practices and legume cultivation by shaping the perceptions and awareness of the farmers. The present study examines the factors determining farmers’ willingness to cultivate legume crops, using data from 596 randomly selected farmers from 40 villages of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. We constructed a Transition Probability Matrix (TPM) to understand the land-use changes across crops in the study districts and followed a contingent valuation approach to analyse the heterogeneity of farmers' preferences and willingness to cultivate legume crops. It was found that agricultural land use patterns in the study districts moved toward monoculture over time. The interval regression estimates of farmers’ willingness to cultivate legume crops suggested a dire need to couple external financial incentives with conventional extension activities, at least in the initial stages of project intervention. However, carefully selecting the legume species and changing the nature of intervention based on local preferences could lower farmers' need for financial incentives and thus the total project cost, while increasing the probability of the success of interventions.