Is India’s renewable energy push a threat to food security?

DELHI, India — India needs to double its electricity requirements by 2030 to fulfill its growing demand but cannot address it with nonrenewables thanks to the country’s commitment to renewable energy. To counter this, the Indian government set a bold target to increase its renewable energy capacity to 500 GW or half its energy needs by 2030. While the government managed to increase its use of solar energy to 65GW, it is still only 65% of the 100 GW govt planned to install by the end of 2022. It also came at the cost of agricultural land being converted into solar farms. Experts now worry that this push may lead to food insecurity in the future as the country would need at least 400,000 hectares of land by 2030 to achieve its renewable goals. Shantaram Borse, a 27-year-old farmer from Maharashtra’s Nashik, does not understand why the government wants to take away the hundreds of acres of land he and his fellow farmers have been tilling for decades and give it away. He is the third generation of his family to grow peanuts, maize, and millets on the seven acres of land allotted to his grandfather in 1962. “This agricultural land is in a reserve forest. Over 150 families in the region were given community rights to till the land by the government in 1962. Since then we have been surviving on these 1,000 acres of land. But in September last year, the government allowed Tata Power Renewable Energy Limited to set up a 100MW solar plant on our lands. This allowed the company to coerce and threaten us out of our lands,” Borse alleged. The takeover of their land prompted Borse and other farmers to go on a protest. According to the farmers, they were not given any prior information about the company being allotted the land, and within days their standing crop was ruined. After multiple protests, letters to the authorities, and involving the forest department, the company was asked to shut down in late March this year, but by then, Borse said, they had lost an entire year of income. “The pandemic has shown us that agriculture is the only way to survive, at least in India. Given this, we should be nurturing agriculture, not taking away from it.” --— Bhargavi S. Rao, senior fellow, Environment Support Group “Even though the premises have been sealed, the company people are still around and solar panels have not been taken away. The worst of it all is that they flattened the land, which will now not hold water,” Borse said. Farmers in Nagaon district in the northeastern state of Assam are in a similar situation—they have been protesting their forceful eviction for the installation of a 15 MW solar plant since January 2021. The local Karbi tribe has been cultivating the land since 1981, which was allotted to them by the government under the Assam Tenancy Act of 1971. The act allows the tenant to claim the right of occupancy if they have cultivated a plot of land for more than three years. But in October 2020, police destroyed crops after a private company — Azure Power Forty Private Limited — was allotted approximately 590 acres to set up the solar plant, including their 93 acres of paddy fields. When farmers tried to protest, police arrested 14 of them. “The case is now in the high court,” Ratul Bora, a human rights lawyer representing the farmers said. India has to expand its renewable energy supply to keep up with growing demand. Experts, however, believe that farming cannot be sacrificed to realize the country’s net-zero aspirations. India relies heavily on agriculture with its 19% contribution to the GDP and two-thirds of its 1.4 billion population is dependent on it. The country is the world’s largest sugar-producing country and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, cotton, groundnuts, and even fruits and vegetables. Thus any impact on its food production will affect the global food supply chain and will threaten food security around the world. “Why are we trying to play with food security? We have a huge population to feed,” Devinder Sharma, an expert in agriculture and trade said. According to data from the Land Conflict Watch, there are at least 12 ongoing conflicts between local communities and solar companies across eight states in India. In response to a question in the Parliament, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy confirmed it approved 57 solar parks and ultra-mega solar power projects of 39GW capacity. Environmentalists are concerned that these solar parks, all aimed at low-income areas, will, instead, disrupt local and rural communities. “The pandemic has shown us that agriculture is the only way to survive, at least in India. Given this, we should be nurturing agriculture, not taking away from it,” Bhargavi S. Rao, a senior fellow of the Environment Support Group said. “The government has colluded with industries and land is being leased or bought out at much lower rates from farmers, thus taking away their livelihoods.” Rao said that in the southern state of Karnataka and many other parts of India, farmers were coerced to lease out their lands for as low as $255 per acre a year. “These are small-time farmers and own between three and five acres of land. That’s their annual income,” she said. Rao added that though she agrees with the idea of bringing in more renewable energy, improper planning is directly affecting people. For instance, in Karnataka, in order to start a solar park, a company leveled out 30,000 acres (12,000 hectares) of land, thus affecting the drainage system and leaving it unfit for future agricultural plantations. She stressed that there is no proper planning for toxic waste left behind by the solar panels. And with an excess requirement of 0.35 billion cubic meters of water to clean solar panels in 2022, Rao underlines that mass solar production is not a better alternative. “The government should not have removed solar power from the purview of environmental clearances,” she said. But some experts think that despite all its challenges, renewable energy if planned properly, is a much better alternative to thermal energy. Charles Worringham, a researcher at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who is closely tracking India’s energy transition, wrote in his recent report that India should plan its land use of renewable generation for a smooth transition. Worringham said India would need 75,000 sqm of land by 2050 to achieve its renewable goals — which is 3.3% of nonforested land. “The potential clash between high-value arable land and the need to set up solar plants is a very serious issue because it affects food security. But the co-production of electricity with agriculture by opting for agrivoltaics (coexistence of solar panels and agriculture by sharing light) has great potential and there are 20 sites in India where pilot projects have been set up. Thus, land issues can be addressed if the right decisions are taken about siteing,” he said. Worringham said toxic waste is a non-issue when one compares it with the alternatives. However, environmentalists such as Rao worry that with poor planning and lack of environmental clearances, even small amounts of toxic waste will affect the health of the families living in rural areas. “In the last three or four decades, a whole lot of schemes and land allotments helped people come out of poverty. But diverting these lands to [renewable energy] and bringing in policies which are not aligned with this kind of expansion has forced people to part with their lands, cheating them out of their livelihoods,” Rao said. Visit Food Secured — a series that explores how to save the food system and where experts share groundbreaking solutions for a sustainable and resilient future. This is an editorially independent piece produced as part of our Food Secured series, which is funded by partners. To learn more about this series and our partners, click here.