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India’s rural smallholder farmers (SHFs) face mounting challenges, yet their perspectives remain underutilized or less documented in shaping sustainability pathways. This study integrates bibliometric analysis of 494 publications and participatory engagement with 70 SHFs in Kotni, Chhattisgarh, to co-design resilient futures. Findings revealed that despite growing research on sustainable farming interventions, including conservation agriculture, carbon credit schemes, water harvesting, and global soil initiatives, implementation in India's rural SHF settings remains limited. With most of Chhattisgarh's SHFs relying on single-crop rice farming across 1.5–3-acre plots, sustainable livelihood options are diminishing due to human-environmental pressures. Moreover, area-specific vulnerabilities, including the ageing of experienced farmers, seasonal land rentals, fluctuating yields (2000–3100 rupees/quintal), and vulnerabilities from pests, water scarcity, chemical dependence, and weak value chains, make livelihoods precarious. Rural farmers identified twelve micro-level resilience and adaptation solutions. Banking on these perspectives, a Smallholder Farmers’ Actionable and Resilience Pathway (SHARP), which leverages farmers’ untapped knowledge for adaptive strategies, has been developed. The findings highlight the urgent efforts by policy actors and institutions in translating micro-level evidence-based farmer perspectives into actionable sustainability futures.
Mwabvu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.