00:02This tiring work gives me constant pains, in my back, in my entire body.
00:07I have severe headaches too. It's very difficult to do this job.
00:11It's not a good job, is it? But I don't have a choice. I have to make money.
00:17Archana works on sugarcane fields in the bead district of Maharashtra.
00:23She travels 200 kilometers from her home village each season.
00:27To come here, to one of India's most drought-stricken areas.
00:34Rainfall has been declining for years.
00:38Yet over the past decade, sugarcane cultivation has increased from 180,000 hectares to 300,000.
00:48The crop is not just used to make sugar.
00:51Cane from these fields is now used to produce ethanol under India's biofuel push.
00:56It has already expanded its biofuel production to more than 11 billion litres in 2025.
01:03That's around 3% of India's total oil import.
01:07So there is rising demand for sugarcane, which is one of the most water-intensive crops.
01:15To keep their fields alive, farmers are drilling deeper and deeper into the earth.
01:21For many, the crop remains their only steady income.
01:31For farmers like Anil, growing sugarcane is no longer a choice. It's survival.
01:40Water is scarce everywhere, and we have no option but to grow sugarcane.
01:45You will never lose money by cultivating it.
01:47With other crops, it's difficult.
01:50That's the reason more and more people are turning towards sugarcane.
01:57Anil's family has grown sugarcane here for more than five decades.
02:02Last year, heavy floods damaged much of his crop.
02:08Yet today, sugarcane still covers all four acres of his land, even as the weather grows more unpredictable.
02:16Now Anil has to drill deeper bore wells year after year to be able to keep farming.
02:23Without groundwater, the fields would not survive.
02:30Life of a farmer goes in circles.
02:33We put all our earnings back into sugarcane farming.
02:37The money we make from sugarcane helps us feed our children, send them to school,
02:41and pay hospital bills and support our daily expenses.
02:47Experts warn also that growing dependence on sugarcane could worsen an already acute water crisis.
02:55The head of Beed District's Agriculture Department is worried about the decline of groundwater reserves.
03:04In the past, farmers relied on a crucial reserve in our wells to save the harvest during dry spells.
03:10But as the groundwater disappears, the wells have run bone dry, leaving us with no backup when the rains fail.
03:17Our wells are 50 to 60 feet deep, but there's no water.
03:21Sugarcane has drained the groundwater too extensively.
03:26Across Maharashtra, the crop occupies only around 4% of farms, but uses close to 70% of irrigated water.
03:36In drought-prone Beed, it's a cycle that's becoming harder to sustain.
03:42Even sugar mills are feeling the impact.
03:45Falling groundwater levels and increasingly unpredictable weather are affecting productivity.
03:54The climate has become so harsh and water so scarce that even our best efforts to source it aren't enough
04:01to meet the extreme demands of sugarcane.
04:06Still, many farmers take water from canals, rivers, wells or bore wells to match production needs.
04:13The factories can only run if the farmers are cultivating enough sugarcane.
04:21Both the farmer and the factory want profit.
04:25If the weather favours the farmers, it's going to profit both of us.
04:30But if there's natural occurrences that hinder their production, how are we going to run our factories?
04:41Some farmers are trying to break the cycle by changing how they grow sugarcane.
04:47Shivraj has spent more than three decades working this land.
04:52When his yields began to fall, he sought answers by studying new farming techniques online.
05:01He installed drip irrigation, widening the spacing between plants, and stopped burning crop residue.
05:08Instead, he mulches it back into the soil to retain moisture.
05:15My neighbour uses traditional flood irrigation and harvests about 40 tonnes per acre.
05:20By switching to a drip system, I have managed to double that.
05:23In a small shed beside his fields, he prepares his own organic fertiliser,
05:28a mixture he feeds directly to the roots, through the drip system and by spraying.
05:36In these drums, we make the organic fertilisers needed for farming, such as jivamrut.
05:42Using this, the soil texture improved and the amount of organic carbon increased too,
05:47eventually resulting in higher yield.
05:49By jivamrut, I slashed my cultivation costs by 50% and increased my harvest by 1.5 times.
05:57Within a few seasons, the results were visible.
06:01Not just healthier soil, but bigger harvests.
06:05From the very beginning, my goal has been to push past tradition toward modern agriculture.
06:10I want to prove that advanced methods don't just increase productivity, they create higher profits.
06:16My mission now is to raise awareness so other farmers can see this path too.
06:24The path that India wants to take, boost biofuel production, aiming for 100% ethanol blending in the near future.
06:31This is the common use of pure ethanol as fuel.
06:35It's a way of facing the uncertainty in the global fossil fuel market.
06:39For the sugarcane farmers, the switch to new technology and more sustainable farming techniques is difficult.
06:46The shrinking harvest is being felt far beyond the farmers themselves.
06:50For migrant workers like Archana, it translates into fewer days of work.
06:54She once spent five months cutting cane each season.
06:58Now the work can last barely three months.
07:01Without the harvest, we have only the option to hope to get enough from our own fields to survive.
07:08Despite the risk of pushing water reserves to their limits,
07:12rising demand for sugarcane continues to drive farmers towards this water-intensive crop, keeping the cycle going.
07:19Families, factories and workers depend on it.
07:22In Bede, the real challenge is no longer just the next harvest,
07:27but how to protect and rebuild the region's water resources.
07:31Even if it happens little by little, one drop at a time.
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