Webinar Series Watering the Margins

It is recognised in agriculture research that access to irrigation is deeply intertwined with issues of equity. While this is experienced vividly on the ground, the spatial dimensions of such inequities are rarely visible in satellite imagery. Remotely sensed data can label an area as “efficient” and “productive” based exclusively on the amount of water used against the quantity of crop produced, but it doesn’t reveal the hidden geographies of ethnic, caste, and gender-based inequality. In light of these challenges, in our upcoming episode of Watering the Margins we invite you to join our discussion on mapping inequity and marginalisation in irrigation, especially concerning the challenges encountered by smallholders. Mapping Marginalisation will explore what insights and ideas can such research provide to shape future engagements with smallholders. It will also ask if mapping marginalisation can allow for reimagining “efficiency” and “productivity” in agricultural water management.

The webinar brings together Hans C. Komakech from The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, Tanzania;  Suhas Bhasme from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India, and Tanya Matthan from the London School of Economics, UK to discuss challenges in establishing the spatial dimensions of inequity and methodological approaches required to navigate concerns of marginality.

Please join us on Wednesday 4 September as we learn and collaborate for a socially inclusive farming future. Register for the webinar here!

Agriculture and water management projects attempting to provide earth observation data to farmers often engage exclusively with farmers with large landholdings. Typically, the farmers are men from the dominant class, caste, and ethnic groups. The exclusion of women farmers, smallholders, sharecroppers, and marginal farmers from such programmes deepens the knowledge and resource divide. Watering the Margins is an effort to engage with questions of equity in the generation and use of earth observation data. It also asks how the knowledge traditions of marginal farming communities can be acknowledged and appreciated in such forms of knowledge exchange. On 14 May 2024, the first webinar brought together Seema Kulkarni from India, Bancy Mati from Kenya, and Marloes Mul from the Netherlands to share their insights on working with marginalised farmers and discuss the socio-technical challenges to making earth observation data useful for smallholders.