Speaking to TechGraph, Rohit Bajaj, Co-Founder of Balwaan Krishi, discusses the company’s commitment to transforming India’s diverse farming landscape through affordable mechanization solutions and strategic partnerships with local bodies, and how Balwaan Krishi is empowering farmers to enhance productivity and efficiency.

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Read the complete interview:

TechGraph: Balwaan operates in India’s competitive and fragmented agricultural market. What strategies do you have in place to strengthen your position and scale your operations while keeping your products affordable for small and marginal farmers?

Rohit Bajaj: In Balwaan, we operate in a vibrant and challenging agricultural market, where small and marginal farmers form the backbone of our customer base. To build our position, we focus on three key pillars: innovation, affordability, and accessibility. Our R&D efforts are tailored to developing machines that address the unique challenges of Indian farmers, enhancing productivity while keeping costs low.

Affordability is at the core of what we do, so we streamline production without compromising quality, passing the benefits to farmers. To expand reach, we’re strengthening our distribution network and ensuring top-notch after-sales service, especially in rural areas. For us, it’s about enabling farmers to access dependable machinery that delivers value, season after season.

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TechGraph: Given India’s rural economy is still recovering from post-pandemic challenges, what shifts in rural consumption patterns have you observed, and how has Balwaan adjusted its business strategy in response?

Rohit Bajaj: The post-pandemic period has seen a shift in rural consumption, with farmers prioritizing value over volume. They are focused on essential products that deliver efficiency, durability, and long-term benefits. We’ve aligned with this shift by simplifying our product portfolio to emphasize core machinery that meets these criteria.

To ease financial constraints, we offer flexible payment plans and tailored financing options, helping farmers invest in tools without overwhelming strain. Through workshops and direct outreach, we’ve strengthened farmer education, helping them make informed purchasing decisions. This hands-on approach ensures farmers see the benefits of mechanization and gain confidence in their investments.

TechGraph: What is your strategy for balancing innovation in high-tech machinery with affordability and accessibility for small and medium-sized farmers? How do you navigate the pricing challenges inherent to the Indian agri-sector?

Rohit Bajaj: Our philosophy is simple- cutting-edge technology should empower, not exclude. Balwaan bridges the gap between innovation and affordability by focusing on scalable and localized solutions. By sourcing materials locally, streamlining manufacturing, and leveraging economies of scale, we keep production costs down.

Farmers can choose from a range of options, from basic models to advanced features, ensuring accessibility at all budget levels. We also invest in intuitive designs so that even first-time users find our machines easy to operate. This balance between innovation and simplicity allows us to offer tools that enhance farming without financial strain.

TechGraph: Could you share some insights into your expansion plans within India? Are there any particular regions where you see untapped potential or where Balwaan will be doubling down efforts?

Rohit Bajaj: India’s diversity is an opportunity in itself. We’re prioritizing regions like the North-East, Central India, and parts of Eastern India, as well as a part of south India, where traditional practices dominate, and mechanization remains limited.

These areas have immense potential for transformation, and we’re focusing on introducing machines designed specifically for their unique farming landscapes.

Our efforts also include building a robust service network in these regions to provide reliable support, which is often a key concern for farmers. Collaborating with local agricultural bodies, cooperatives, and influencers in these areas will be instrumental in making our products accessible and impactful.

TechGraph: With climate change impacting crop yields and agricultural practices, how are your machines assisting farmers in adapting to these shifts? Can you share any initiatives Balwaan is undertaking to promote climate-resilient farming techniques?

Rohit Bajaj: Climate change has reshaped the agricultural landscape, and farmers need tools to help them adapt. Balwaan designs machines with sustainability in mind, ensuring they are water-efficient, energy-efficient, and durable under tough conditions.

For instance, we’ve developed tools that minimize soil erosion while retaining moisture, critical for areas facing erratic rainfall. Beyond machines, we work with NGOs and government bodies to educate farmers on climate-resilient techniques. Together, we’re building an ecosystem where farmers are equipped to overcome environmental challenges while embracing sustainable practices.

Rohit Bajaj: We deeply understand the financial constraints of small farmers and have tailored solutions to address these challenges. By collaborating with banks and microfinance institutions, we offer easy financing options with low interest rates.

Additionally, we’ve introduced pay-per-use and leasing models, enabling farmers to access machinery during peak seasons without upfront investment. These measures allow farmers to adopt mechanization while managing their cash flow effectively, ensuring they can focus on growing their income.

TechGraph: What do you envision for the future of India’s agricultural sector in terms of mechanization and technology adoption? How is Balwaan positioning itself to lead in these evolving trends?

Rohit Bajaj: India’s agricultural sector is on the brink of a transformation, where mechanization and technology adoption will drive growth. Balwaan envisions a future where every farmer, irrespective of size or scale, has access to tools that make farming more efficient and sustainable.

We’re committed to leading this shift by creating affordable, adaptable, and scalable machinery. Our focus is on empowering farmers to integrate modern tools into their age-old wisdom, creating a blend that respects tradition while embracing the future.

TechGraph: Are there plans for international expansion, particularly into other developing countries where agriculture remains a key economic driver? How do you foresee global trends influencing Balwaan’s strategy and operations over the next decade?

Rohit Bajaj: Absolutely, Balwaan is exploring opportunities in regions like Africa and Southeast Asia, where the challenges of small-scale farming resonate with our expertise. These markets present an opportunity to introduce our affordable and efficient solutions.

At the same time, global trends in sustainable and digital agriculture are shaping our strategy. Over the next decade, we aim to become a global player, sharing India’s lessons in mechanization while adapting to the needs of other emerging economies.

When Suzanne D’Amico moved from Dallas an hour north to Celina, Texas, there was one grocery store, longhorn cattle down the road and no lights on the horizon at night. Farmers wearing overalls gathered for morning coffee, teenagers packed the local pizzeria after Friday night football games, and neighbors prayed together at church on Sunday.

“It felt like we were on another planet,” said D’Amico, who has lived for nearly 30 years in Celina where she raised her children. “We weren’t just outside the city, we were completely gone from anything we considered at the time remotely civilized.”

But D’Amico’s slice of small town America is quickly vanishing. Like rural communities across the country, Celina is seeing a housing boom that made it America’s fastest growing city in 2023. Now, pastures have been replaced with densely packed homes, golf carts zip around planned communities where tractors once plowed and local businesses are being replaced with big box chains.

While the expansion of the suburbs is nothing new, a surge in home prices over the past several years has supercharged the trend, pushing homebuyers across the country further out from city centers to areas like Celina where land is cheaper and more plentiful and local barriers for developers tend to be lower.

Since the start of the pandemic, the population in rural areas has been growing for the first time in at least a decade, a U.S. Department of Agriculture analysis found. Among the 500 fastest growing cities in the country, the number of those more than 30 miles from a city center increased by 26% between 2019 to 2023, according to Census figures.

At the forefront of that trend is Celina. Its population increased by 27% in 2023 and over the past decade the town has gone from around 7,000 residents to more than 43,000 last year, according to Census data. With more than 200 people moving there each week, the city projects it will have more than 100,000 residents by 2029.

“For families that are moving now, affordability is a huge factor,” said Celina Mayor Ryan Tubbs, who said the town has been attracting people from higher-priced parts of Dallas as well as more expensive states like California. “The amount of house that you can get goes a lot farther.”

For those coming to Celina, which is about 40 miles north of Dallas, the development boom has provided a refuge from soaring housing prices, allowing newcomers to have the suburban lifestyle they are seeking at a lower cost than they could find elsewhere. But for some longtime residents, the migration has meant a loss to their sense of community, higher costs and a threat to their livelihoods.

A shortage of undeveloped land in the Dallas area has pushed builders further north into Collin County, which includes Celina and other fast growing communities like Princeton, Prosper and Anna. There, homebuilders are selling 2,000-square-foot homes for $400,000 to $500,000 compared to $700,000 to $1 million for a similar home in suburbs closer into downtown Dallas, said Bryan Swindell, president of PulteGroup’s Dallas Division.

“Southern Collin County is just getting really, really, really expensive. Places like Frisco, McKinney, they just have no more large pieces of land so builders have started working north,” said Swindell. “When a piece of land comes on the market there’s 10 developers and builders bidding on it.”

Most of the new developments being built are master-planned communities with more than 1,000 tightly packed homes, a scale that makes the construction process more economical for builders. Many of the communities have their own self-contained amenities, like pools, parks, biking trails, playgrounds, and in some cases, their own school.

The big box retailers and chain stores are following the migration. The town will get its first Walmart and Costco in the coming months and last year it got its second Starbucks.

While Celina has been racing to keep up with the pace of growth, the nearby town of Princeton, Texas, the third fastest growing city in the country, put a hold on all new residential development in September to give the city time to expand its water and roadway infrastructure and build up the necessary police force.

‘It’s happening’

For LaCinda Russell, the growth has come at a loss. Her family has lived near Celina for three generations, but after home prices in the region increased more than 50% over the past five years she doesn’t expect to ever be able to afford her own home there. She’s been living with her best friend in the house her friend’s family built more than two decades ago — a place that now feels like an island of familiarity in a sea of change.

Outside her window, a large crane is putting in a well on land that she expects to become a subdivision once the elderly woman who has owned it for decades passes away. The town recently lost the pizzeria where her classmates used to gather after football games along with a popular snow cone stand and burger joint off the town square.

“I’ve seen businesses come and go. I’ve seen people come and go,” said Russell. “Sentimentality dies when you cannot afford to maintain that lifestyle, and that’s a lot of what we’re seeing around here. People that have owned land for hundreds of years around here are having to let it go.”

That growth has also threatened those trying to make a living off the land, which has some of the country’s best soil for farming and cattle grazing. Collin County lost 115,000 acres of farmland between 2012 and 2022 and the number of farms with more than 500 acres has been nearly cut in half over that time, according to USDA data. Nationwide, the country lost 35 million acres of farmland over that period.

“North Texas is some of the most fertile soil in the country, that’s why Dallas is where it’s at and we’re building houses and developments on top of it,” said Kelcey Kasper, a sixth-generation rancher whose family has been in Collin County since the 1860s. “They’re not making any more land so eventually, if we keep building like we are, there won’t be any land for ag production. We’ll have to rely on somebody else for our food. I think that’s a really scary future.”

Kasper currently raises cattle and grows hay about 30 miles east of Celina, but he fears the growth happening there will soon be coming for his community and jeopardizing his ability to keep the family tradition going. Most farmers and ranchers in the area have to lease their land from investors or developers, who have been buying up properties over the past decade.

“I intend to live here for as long as I can, but I may not always be able to run livestock here and farm here, because the property values are going up,” Kasper said. “It’s hard being able to still make a living out here because the land is going away.”

But that loss is a gain for newcomers like Jasmine Hughes. She is among those who flocked to the area looking for a more affordable life for her and her six children. When she was living in Dallas, her rent was $1,900 a month for a two-bedroom apartment and she struggled to find anything in her price range with more space. Now, she’s renting a three-bedroom house in a sprawling subdivision for $2,500 a month with better schools and more outdoor space.

“I just needed something that was more affordable,” said Hughes, who moved to the area last year. “That is why we moved out here. It’s more realistic to get into a three or four-bedroom house so that me and my kids can all sleep and live comfortably.”

In just the past year, the main road o​​utside her subdivision has added a Starbucks, a McDonald’s, a carwash and dentist office. She sees that growth as a professional opportunity — she runs a daycare that she is hoping to expand and has started teaching fitness classes.

“I feel excited about it, I just see so much opportunity for me and my family,” Hughes said. “I do hear some of the people who’ve lived here not wanting Celina to change that much, which I do understand, but it’s happening.”

Local officials are seeing no slowdown in growth, which has presented a range of logistical challenges. The city is proposing $757 million in projects over the next five years, including new parks, water infrastructure and an emergency dispatch center. The school district plans to add one to two new elementary schools each year for the foreseeable future.

Keeping Celina relatively affordable has also been a challenge for local officials with the typical home now selling for around $550,000. As land prices go up in Celina, developers like Plute’s Swindell are looking even further north to be able to build homes in the $300,000 price range.

‘A mixed blessing’

Luke Thigpen moved to Celina in 2019 to start a church and has been renting while trying to save up to buy a home for around $400,000. But it has been a challenge as home prices have continued to rise year after year.

He sees the growth as an opportunity, especially when it comes to expanding his congregation, but he worries about the tensions a wave of newcomers could create in a community known for having a strong tradition of Christian values.

“People see diversity coming in and they automatically put their guard up. They want to protect what they find are good values in life and that’s understandable,” Thigpen said. “You have other cultures that are moving in and it’s just simply an understanding that some people see the world differently, some people celebrate life differently and you have to make room for that.”

For D’Amico, after nearly three decades in Celina, she’s seen both pros and cons from the growth. Her husband’s construction business has thrived and the value of the land they’ve purchased over the years has soared.

“We’ve seen full fields of five-foot tall sunflowers, full fields of winter wheat, head-high corn and it’s hard to see it gone now,” she said. “My husband is a builder so it’s kind of a mixed blessing for us, but I do hate to see the fields go away.”

A 2,500-acre ranch down the road from her home was recently sold to a developer who plans to put thousands of housing units on it. Soon, a thoroughfare will be cutting through the open land 500 yards from her back fence.

“I know it’s going to kill my silence, the quietness around my house,” she said. “I’ve had 27 years of it, so I can’t really complain, but it has become very precious to me now.”

Bharwani also highlights the role of Instagram in empowering these influencers: “It has given these creators a platform to showcase their unique perspectives and has provided them with the tools to build sustainable careers. This has been a game-changer for many influencers who may not have had access to traditional avenues of success.”

Collaborations and Monetisation

From FMCG giants to startups, all kinds of companies are collaborating with these creators to promote their products and services. Sejal Kothary, CEO of See Love, a skincare brand dedicated to transforming beauty narratives towards authentic wellbeing, believes regional influencers are a powerful force for brands like hers, seeking genuine connection and meaningful change. “They command deep trust within their communities, and thus their endorsements are actively embraced,” she says.

Jadhav, with his focus on agriculture, for example, has partnered with Mahindra and Bayer, Kanpuriya has promoted Shark Tank, Jeevansaathi.com, Amazon Alexa, and Colors TV, and Seetharaman, a tech influencer from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, has collaborated with tech giants such as Motorola and Samsung, to name a few. Through his TechSatire platform (@techsatire), which has 341k followers, Seetharaman appeals to enthusiasts and consumers looking for gadgets and advice in Tamil. “Recently, we did branded content for Kia Sonet, and that worked well. People seemed to enjoy such content from our handle. We had created a reel for a hydrogen-based car earlier, which too did well, as do reels on smartphones. Content about Apple, in particular, does very well,” he shares.

Ram Parmar (@farmer_choice), a 23-year-old farmer from Birakhedi village in Madhya Pradesh, who started his YouTube channel at the age of 17, is thrilled about his capacity to earn on socials. “When I started, I used to earn $100 on YouTube; the pay went into my dad’s account as I didn’t have a bank account back then. Today, I earn over Rs 1 lakh for a single brand collaboration; my monthly income, on average, is Rs 1.5-2 lakh. From my earnings, over these last five years, I’ve built an office worth `10 lakh in my village, and now, I work with a team of two. I’ve purchased a car, an iPhone, a gaming PC and MacBook,” shares the influencer with 220k followers on Instagram.

However, not all heartland influencers have found the same level of monetary success. Despite a following of 3.7M, Shivani Kumari (@shivani__kumari321) from Ariyari village in Uttar Pradesh, finds it challenging to monetise her content. Kumari, who showcases rural life through humorous sketches and songs, says, “I hear of other regional creators making lakhs off their Instagram collaborations, but I haven’t managed to do so.” She says she knows of English creators with the same sort of following who “make twice as much money as I do”.

Despite her growing popularity, Thombre too says, “Relying solely on social media for my earnings is not an option for me.” She remains committed to her full-time job as a superintendent at National Law University.

While Jose and Tharien’s perspectives on the future of social media and the influencer landscape may seem contrasting at first glance, both underscore the importance of adaptability and financial prudence in this industry. Jose believes that while social media has potential, influencers should not rely on it as their sole source of income. In his view, the wise approach is to have a primary business that social media supports and complements. “In my opinion, people are losing interest in social media, and one must not depend on it as a source of revenue 100 per cent,” he says.

Uprooted: How climate change is reshaping migration from Honduras

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LAGUNAS LA IGUALA, Honduras — To reach the Pérez family’s farm, you have to drive on miles of narrow dirt roads in the mountains of western Honduras, up and down steep slopes lined with row after row of dark green coffee plants.

Not all of those plants are thriving, and neither are the farmers who tend them.

“When it comes to coffee, it needs water to flower,” says Francis Pérez, who grew up picking coffee on his family’s farm here. The fruit of the coffee plant starts out green, he explains, before turning to yellow and red as they ripen. But erratic rainfall is hurting the crop. “Often, it flowers but it doesn’t grow berries — that’s a big loss.”

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Pérez is 19 and skinny, with a light mustache. He loves working his family’s land. But he’s worried that he won’t be able to support himself in farming like his parents did. So he’s thinking about following hundreds of thousands of other Hondurans and migrating to the U.S.

“I feel that I’m stuck,” he says in Spanish. “I don’t feel like I can build the future I want here.”

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More people around the world are on the move than ever before, and the changing climate is one reason why. In Honduras, climate change is making it harder to live off the land. For the Pérez family and countless others, that’s making the already difficult decision about whether to migrate even more complicated.

Central America was pummeled by back-to-back Hurricanes Eta and Iota in 2020, fueled in part by warming oceans. Extreme weather events like hurricanes are the most obvious way that climate change has hurt farmers here. But there’s also the slow-moving catastrophe of erratic rainfall and drought that is gradually undermining traditional agriculture.

Since the beginning of 2021, U.S. immigration authorities have encountered more migrants from Honduras at the southern border than any other country except Mexico. Some of the reasons are familiar: violence, corruption and a lack of economic opportunity, exacerbated by the pandemic.

Now climate change is adding one more pressure to the list. Experts told us that climate disruptions are making younger Hondurans, and particularly young women, more likely to migrate to the U.S. in search of a better life.

These are often wrenching decisions for families that are separated by migration. Children and parents are acutely aware of the dangers and costs of the journey, and they agonize about the risks and whether the potential reward is worth it.

NPR talked to dozens of people in rural towns and villages in the mountains of western Honduras who are wrestling with the difficult decision about whether to migrate. Some are trying to adapt to the changing reality of erratic rainfall and extreme weather, while others are simply waiting for the right moment to leave.

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Young people don’t see a future in agriculture

Farmers in rural Honduras have traditionally depended on rainfall to water their crops. That worked well when weather cycles were easier to predict. But Roberto Pérez, Francis’ father, says that’s no longer the case.

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“It’s really hard to guess what’s coming,” says Pérez, who grew up working this land alongside his own parents. Now 64, he’s wearing a cream-colored cowboy hat and says he feels naked without it. Pérez says it’s gotten more difficult to make a living because the weather is more erratic.

“It impacts crops a lot in terms of production,” Pérez says. “When you expect winter, summer sets in and the other way around.”

Scientists have seen it, too. This region of Honduras is part of the so-called Dry Corridor that stretches from Nicaragua to southern Mexico. Until recently, climate scientists say the weather patterns here fell into a predictable rhythm: rains in the spring, followed by a few months of drier weather, followed by a similar cycle in the fall.

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But that familiar pattern has broken down.

“What is happening clearly is that temperatures have gone up and rain patterns are irregular now,” said Josué León, a climate scientist at Zamorano University in Honduras. “The extremes are becoming more extreme. The dry season is becoming longer and the rainy season keeps shrinking, and they are more torrential. We get more rain in less time.”

León owns a farm himself, in the western part of the country, a few hours from Francis Pérez and his family. León says a lot of young people don’t see a future in agriculture anymore.

“When farming becomes too risky and you lose more than you invest, agriculture is no longer attractive to young people,” León says. “There isn’t much available to them and the only other option is to migrate.”

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The Pérez family has seen some of the worst effects of climate change up close. Catastrophic flooding from Hurricanes Eta and Iota in 2020 destroyed their small store in town, and landslides swept away part of their coffee farm on a mountainside nearby.

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For Anabel Pérez, Francis’ mother, the memories are still raw. “Climate change has affected us deeply,” she said in Spanish. Her eyes fill with tears as we sit and talk on her front porch. “The hurricanes lashed out,” she says. “We lost our crop, and our farm was heavily damaged.”

The Pérez family has done its best to rebuild after the hurricanes. Chickens and parrots squawk in the yard outside their one-story house. It’s solidly built, with lime-green cinder-block walls and tiled floors.

“We began with one small room. We’ve lived here for 30 years, since we got married, and we’ve been adding to it,” Anabel Pérez says. Her husband finishes her sentence. “You have to work hard and make an effort, otherwise you won’t accomplish anything,” he says.

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The family is trying to build new businesses as well, so they won’t have to rely completely on the coffee farm. There’s a pig they’re raising for slaughter and a tilapia pond where they’re farming fish to sell. But Francis Pérez says it’s hard to save money. “Here you work to cover your daily needs,” Pérez says. “We don’t have capital for an emergency.”

At the same time, there’s the pull of the United States. Migrants are an essential economic engine in Honduras: Remittances make up more than a quarter of the country’s GDP, according to the World Bank, the highest rate in the Western Hemisphere.

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You can see that clearly in Lagunas La Iguala, where the Pérez family lives — in the big, brightly painted homes with Spanish-style roofs, built with dollars sent back from the U.S.

“The nice homes near the church — all the children are working in the U.S. Our next-door neighbor’s son is also in the U.S. The one across the street did the same thing,” Pérez says. “Practically every household around here has someone working in the U.S.”

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Pérez has been talking to a family friend in Houston who says he can help Pérez get on his feet and find a job. He could save money and send some back to help his family. Pérez’s father knows that, too.

“When you hear about how much you can earn and the strength of the dollar versus the [Honduran] lempira, you want to go!” Roberto Pérez says with a chuckle. But he knows it’s not an easy decision to make.

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Francis Pérez did well in school. He finished high school, where he studied health, agriculture and business administration. And he had a decent job in Honduras doing health care outreach for a nonprofit. But the job didn’t pay enough to help the family save money or invest in the family’s farm.

So he quit in December, partly to plan his trip north. Francis’ former boss understands the pull of the U.S.

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“It’s unfortunate, because Francis is not the only case,” said Patrocinio Sarmiento, who was Francis’ supervisor. Sarmiento is a doctor who spends much of his time traveling around the countryside in western Honduras, where he has met a lot of young people who are weighing the same decision.

“We are a young country without access to jobs,” Sarmiento laments. “Lots of unemployed young people, 19, 20, 21. Their best chance is to go to the U.S., work hard and come back to Honduras with capital to have a better future here.”

The “feminization” of migration

Vitalina de Jesús Díaz welcomes visitors to her home on the side of a steep hillside in western Honduras, in a village called Los Ranchos.

Her house is tiny, just two rooms. One of them is made of adobe, and the floor is bare dirt. Roosters, chickens and dogs wander around the backyard. We sit down to talk next to a large wash sink, with clotheslines strung all around us.

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The yard is also bare dirt and turns to mud when it rains. And sometimes, de Jesús says, it rains a lot.

“We have heavy rains and hurricanes here,” she says in Spanish. “It’s different now. The rainy season lasted three months and now we have heavy periods of rain. The weather has changed. It’s not predictable anymore.”

Coffee harvesting used to be steady work, de Jesús says. It helped her raise 10 kids on her own after her husband died. But she says that work isn’t reliable anymore. That’s why most have moved away, except for her youngest daughter, Jesús Santiago Díaz.

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Santiago works picking coffee during the harvest season. She gets paid by how many gallons of fruit she picks, earning a little more than $2 per gallon. On a good day, she can pick enough coffee berries to fill 10 buckets. But those good days are rare.

“When berries ripen, they have to be harvested quickly. If not, they fall off,” she says. “What happens is that coffee is ready to harvest and heavy rain comes down, forcing the coffee berries to detach from the bush, and it quickly rots on the ground.”

Santiago has been working since she dropped out of school when she was 7. Now 23, she has tried to migrate to the U.S. twice already.

“I don’t want to live like this forever. I want to grow, get a better, full-time job,” she says. “I want a better future, a different future.” Santiago’s story isn’t unusual. Experts say that the number of women and girls leaving Central America is nearly equal to the number of men, and some experts believe that climate disruptions are partly to blame.

“I would argue that it is mostly women and girls affected by climate change and extreme climate events,” says Betilde Muñoz-Pogossian, who works on behalf of vulnerable populations at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C.

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Muñoz-Pogossian says climate disruptions fall especially hard on women and girls in rural Honduras, where generations of women with little education have depended on agriculture to survive.

“Climate change kind of adds up to the series of other factors that are present there that have to do with poverty, inequality, violence,” Muñoz-Pogossian says. “I think climate change adds to the cocktail of reasons why people migrate.”

Globally, women are also migrating in roughly the same numbers as men — a phenomenon that Muñoz-Pogossian and others call the “feminization” of migration.

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This wasn’t always the case — particularly at the U.S.-Mexico border, where the vast majority of migrants used to be men. But over the past decade, that has been changing. In 2012, only 14% of the migrants encountered at the border were women. That has grown to more than a third (35%) in 2019, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Those who leave rural villages in Honduras don’t always head straight for the U.S. Often they migrate internally first, trying to find work in a bigger city in Honduras.

Santiago has tried that as well. She moved to El Progreso, in northern Honduras, several hours by bus from her home in the mountains. She worked at a banana processing facility, hoping to save money to help her mother.

But it didn’t work out as she hoped. “It was a struggle because I had a lot of expenses, meals, housing, and transportation. And the pay wasn’t great. I was breaking even,” she says.

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Santiago ended up back with her mother in Los Ranchos. Now she’s picking coffee when she can, and she makes some extra money cleaning houses. But she says it’s not enough. She’s planning to try again to migrate to the U.S.

“I’d miss home. I’d miss it terribly,” she says. “But I also want to get ahead.”

The last time Santiago tried to migrate, she went with one of her brothers. They made it several hundred miles, as far as southern Mexico. But they were caught by immigration authorities in Veracruz and deported back to Honduras. Santiago says they were broken both financially and emotionally by the experience.

Santiago’s mother has mixed feelings about her plan.

“It’s sadness and pride, because she wants a better future, and I can’t give it to her here,” Vitalina de Jesús Díaz says. “I do hope she goes, because there is no hope here.”

Tears welling up in her eyes, she says, “I tell God that she’s going to make the journey, and she’ll get there with a bright future awaiting.”

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Farmers try to adapt

The government of Honduras acknowledges that climate change is a serious problem, though it’s unclear how much the country’s leaders can do about it.

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In the fall of 2022, Honduran President Xiomara Castro traveled to New York to speak to the United Nations General Assembly. She noted the irony that her country — one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere — has contributed relatively little to climate change, while suffering some of its most dramatic effects.

“The industrialized nations of the world are responsible for the serious deterioration of the environment,” Castro said. “But they make us pay because of their onerous lifestyle.”

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The U.S. has pledged billions of dollars to fight the root causes of migration in northern Central America. The Biden administration has announced more than $4 billion in commitments from the private sector, on top of more than a billion dollars in aid. But only a small fraction of that money — roughly $54 million — is directly pledged to climate change projects, according to a report by the Root Causes Initiative, a network of faith-based organizations in Central America, Mexico and the U.S.

The needs in Honduras are huge. Almost 30% of the population works in agriculture, and the vast majority are small farmers. Agriculture experts say it’s possible for farmers in Honduras to adapt to erratic rainfall brought on by climate change. But they warn that it won’t be cheap, or easy.

“Adaptation requires investment,” says Josué León, the climate scientist at Zamorano University. And the most critical adaptation, he argues, is access to water.

“When farmers have water, they can grow food all year round. Having water is an adaptation measurement that generates income,” León says. “First, we need an irrigation system. No. 2, we need to learn how to use water more efficiently — a greenhouse is the way to do that. And it also helps with pest control.”

But those kinds of investment are far beyond the means of most farmers in Honduras, who have limited access to banks or loans. The government has no insurance program for crops or livestock, so small farmers are largely on their own. And so far, León doesn’t see much help coming.

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“If the government organized farmers and spent some resources on this, if you have water, technical and market advice, if you ask me if all farmers can adapt? I’d say yes,” León said.

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In fact, León says, there’s an example in his own family. His brother-in-law, Edwin Guillén, has built a complex of greenhouses where he grows tomatoes in a small town called San Jerónimo, Copán.

“It’s protected from rains, winds, hurricanes and bugs. We also have a drip irrigation system and we use less chemicals here,” Guillén explains.

Inside, Guillén shows off thousands of healthy-looking tomato plants growing in plastic containers and lined up in neat rows. Because he’s not totally dependent on the weather, Guillén can grow all year round.

“We do staggered plantings and harvests,” he says. “I don’t want to saturate the market.”

Guillén sells his tomatoes to local grocery stores. But he has dreams of someday exporting his crop to the U.S. and Canada.

Guillén knows that he’s lucky: He has a steady source of water, thanks to a spring that was tapped by a project supported by the U.S. government. He was able to get a loan to pay for the greenhouses and the rest of his irrigation system. And he has some of his money to invest too — money he saved when he was working in the U.S.

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Like many people in Honduras, Guillén is intimately familiar with migration and the toll it can take on families.

“We are a family that was torn apart by migration when my father migrated,” he says.

Guillén says his father migrated to the U.S. when he was about 5 years old. “He stayed in contact with us for a year only,” Guillén says. “It was hard not to have my dad here and not to have any contact with him.”

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Guillén went north to work, and to look for his father. He made it all the way to Baltimore.

“I found him,” Guillén said. “But he didn’t want to come back. He stayed in Baltimore. I had to come back because I’m the oldest, we are three brothers and we have land. I needed to farm our lands.”

Eventually Guillén says he moved on, and he forgave his father. Now Guillén is a father of four himself, with a large house and a shiny new truck. And his greenhouses create year-round employment for more than a dozen workers. One of his main challenges is finding enough workers to tend his crops, because so many young working-age people have left.

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Staying “rooted” to the land

Nearly everyone we met in Honduras knows someone who has migrated to the United States. Farmer José Dionisio Cordova Ruíz has six cousins who have moved to California. And they call often, he says, urging him to join them.

But he has stayed behind to farm. We asked Cordova why he stayed to work his family’s land, when so many of his friends and cousins have left.

“Good question,” he said with a laugh. He paused for a long moment before answering.

“I’ve been raised in agriculture,” he said finally. “When I was a child, I remember my dad carried me on his shoulders to inspect the land and the crops. And it’s rooted in me; it’s who I am.”

Cordova is dressed in a dusty plaid shirt that hangs off his lanky frame and a faded baseball hat. He’s only able to work the land here part time, when he can get away from his day job.

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It’s late in the day by the time Cordova can make it to his family’s farm in a tranquil valley in northwest Honduras. Geese honk protectively as he shows visitors around his fields in the fading dusk light. Cordova, who is 27 and single, teaches farming and water management at a technical school in the nearby town of Macuelizo, where he lives. He says things have changed a lot since his father worked this land.

“It’s not impossible to stay in agriculture, but it’s gotten complicated,” Cordova says. “What I see is that old practices are not viable. We are forced to implement new technologies.”

He and his sister are trying to keep the farm going, experimenting with different crops like yucca and watermelon that are more resilient to climate change and more tolerant of drought. But even these new crops are no guarantee of success, says Cordova.

“The problem was too much water,” Cordova explains. “After we planted the yucca we had about a month and a half of very strong rains and after that, we never got rain again. I lost more than half of the harvest.”

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Still, the siblings are not giving up. They’ve taken out a loan to add irrigation. Those investments are expensive, and risky. When their crops fail, they have to spend money from their paychecks to keep up with the loan payments.

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Cordova and his sister can afford to make those investments because they have relatively good jobs to fall back on. But most farmers in Honduras don’t have that kind of safety net.

That includes Francis Pérez, the 19-year-old coffee farmer in Lagunas La Iguala. When we first talked to him earlier this year, Pérez said his plan was to work in the U.S. for a few years. When he’d saved enough money, he would move back to Honduras and invest his earnings in his family’s land, to diversify their farm and make it more resilient to climate change.

But the family also knows that the journey is dangerous, and expensive. Anabel Pérez is struggling with her son’s plan to migrate. She wants him to be happy and successful. But they’ll have to borrow thousands of dollars to pay for a smuggler, and that’s still no guarantee of a safe journey.

“He always talked about migrating, and we would say no, the journey is difficult, and we don’t have money for that,” she says. “He’s been talking about it since he was 16. We’ve managed to keep him here but this time is different.”

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“We are afraid,” Roberto Pérez adds. The thought alone fills his eyes with tears. “Many have died on the journey.” When we talked to Francis Pérez again a few weeks ago, he no longer sounded so sure about his plans. His parents are getting older, and he’s worried about them.

“It’s a very difficult decision,” Pérez says. “I’d be migrating looking for a better future. But I fear they’ll feel lonely and even depressed. I’m evaluating the economic gain, versus my parents’ feelings and health. I think about it constantly.”

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This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo and Emily Silver and edited by Jenny Schmidt. Our engineer was Maggie Luthar.

We’d love to hear from you. Send us an email at UpFirstSunday@npr.org.

Listen to Up First on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Tatsey said the Blackfeet Nation in Northern Montana has seen an increase in small tea and vegetable gardens full of native plants, tribal college U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs, and food pantry garden programs, helping individuals start their own gardens. In addition, regenerative grazing is becoming increasingly popular; more ranchers are rotating cattle to spread manure more efficiently, improving soil health.

“Bringing identity back to people is why I see Native foods taking off,” Tatsey said. “Our people weren’t comfortable doing it for so many years due to boarding schools and the loss of culture.”

Boarding schools, where the U.S. government sent Native American children to assimilate to Euro-American culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, were one attempt to erase Indigenous culture. The boarding-school push followed decades of government moves to take away Native American lands, separating people from traditional farming practices.

In 1851, Congress enacted the Indian Appropriations Act, which moved Native Americans––many from the Great Plains states and farther west—to reservations. The Dawes Act of 1887 allotted 160 acres of land to the head of each Native family. The remaining Indigenous land—90 million acres, mostly in the Great Plains—was sold to non-Natives.

Christina Gish Hill, a professor of American Indian Studies at Iowa State University, said, “The repercussions of allotment are enormous. First of all, you’re dividing extended family groupings as you’re dividing the land. Instead of people having access, say to river bottoms, where they would grow as extended families or as clans, now officially they only have access to their 160 acres.

“Then you have non-Native people buying the land in between each of these plots, and they are growing using Euro-American agricultural practices on those lands. Ultimately, through more policies that followed, a lot of people ended up losing their allotments, so they essentially became landless, having no land of their own where they can grow.”

Around the same time that these policies were enacted, the U.S. government organized the slaughter of millions of bison, a staple food for the Blackfeet people. Tatsey said there were fewer than 20 bison on the Blackfeet Nation toward the end of the 1800s.

“In order to take the power from tribal nations, they had to take away their food source,” Tatsey said. “That was the only way they could expand across the west of the United States.” Carolyn Merchant supports Tatsey’s claim in her book, American Environmental History: An Introduction. She writes that in 1867, one member of the U.S. Army commanded his troops to “kill every buffalo you can. Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”

These policies severed Native Americans from their food sources. Fillmore said that when the Washoe people were displaced from much of the land where they cultivated food, they were alienated from traditional practices.

The U.S. government actively suppressed Indigenous farming practices, according to Carter, who works for Native Seeds/SEARCH. Case in point: In 1819, Congress established a government fund to hire non-Native people of “good moral character to instruct Indians in the mode of agriculture suited to their situation,”—meaning Euro-American agriculture. This law was highlighted in a 1997 article in the University of Nebraska’s American Indian Quarterly.

For Carter, who is based in the Southwest, the current revival of traditional agriculture and Native seeds provides clear evidence that, despite the U.S. government’s attempts to eliminate Indigenous agricultural practices, their efforts did not completely succeed. The farming practices continue as they have for 4,000 years.

In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes that Native American agriculture began in 2100 BCE in the Sonoran Desert of present-day Arizona.

“For those outside of the Southwest, it does not seem like an area where there’d be thriving agriculture due to scarcities of water and a sparseness of vegetative life, and yet you find this immensely rich agricultural tradition and extremely productive and yet sustainable agriculture system that was traditional to the peoples of the region,” Carter said.

Cultivation Oriented to the Local Climate