Ms. Megha Mhaskar will present her APS as per the details below:
Date: 26th September 2025
Time: 1600 – 1700 hrs.
Venue: C-TARA Conference Room No.1
Title: Quantifying Water-Energy-Food Nexus (Synergies and Trade-offs) in Sugarcane Farming: A Case of Drought-Prone Area of Maharashtra State, India
Guide: Prof. Parmeshwar D. Udmale
RPC Members: Prof. Amit Arora, Prof. Yogendra Shastri
Abstract:
The complex relationship between water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus is crucial for supporting human livelihoods and ensuring sustainable agriculture. In the changing climate era, concerns about the overexploitation of land, water, and energy resources exist. It is, therefore, crucial to use these resources efficiently to meet present demand by reducing trade-offs and increasing synergies, ensuring environmental sustainability. Over the last few decades, changes in cropping patterns and increased spatial-temporal variations in rainfall have increased uncertainties in Indian crop production. Over six years (2015-2021), India lost 33.9 million hectares of agricultural land due to floods and excessive rainfall, while droughts affected an additional 35 million hectares. Various studies suggest these challenges are likely to intensify in the future.
Maharashtra is one of the states in India's semi-arid region, which often experiences water scarcity. About 42.5% of its area is drought-prone, experiencing frequent drought-driven water scarcity. Nearly 79.5% of the total sugarcane is cultivated in drought-prone districts of the state. Moreover, around 62% of ethanol production from sugarcane highlights the role of the crop in ensuring India's targets proposed in the ‘National Policy on Biofuels - 2018’. According to the amendments made in 2022, India will need an additional 6.26 million hectares of land under sugarcane to achieve the 20% ethanol blending petrol target by 2025. This amendment will support many national initiatives; however, it will also raise concerns about water resources exploitation driven by excessive groundwater consumption, high resource consumption, shifts in cropping patterns, land demand, and diversion in irrigation water use away from foodgrain crops, which will put food production systems in competition, along with the effects of climate change.
These challenges suggest that an integrated approach is required to understand the interrelationships between the WEF nexus. In this background, the objective of this research is to investigate the WEF nexus of sugarcane crop versus foodgrain crops in Maharashtra in the context of biofuels-based energy targets. In the initial phase of this research, an indicator-based hotspot analysis was used to assess food and water security at the sub-district level in Maharashtra, along with preliminary fieldwork and the formulation of a methodological framework. The present work focuses on developing a sugarcane–based biofuel energy simulation model using a systems dynamics modeling approach. This includes conceptualizing and developing a stock-flow model, along with scenario analysis that has been used to assess the impact of multiple resource use and policy parameters.