Guwahati: As World Elephant Day focuses on the growing challenge of protecting elephants while reducing conflict with people, an experiment in Assam is pointing to a practical solution: changing what farmers grow in areas frequently visited by wild elephant herds.
The approach, being promoted by biodiversity conservation organisation Aaranyak in parts of Udalguri, Baksa and Tamulpur districts, encourages farmers to replace crops such as paddy and maize that attract elephants with crops that are less palatable to them.
The idea is simple but potentially significant for communities living on the edges of elephant habitats. Wild elephants often raid paddy, sugarcane and other conventional crops close to human settlements, resulting in recurring crop losses and economic hardship for farmers.
Instead of trying to keep elephants away from every field, the strategy seeks to make farms less attractive to them while giving farmers crops that can generate income.
Aaranyak said it has so far distributed 12,625 chilli and lemon saplings, 9,036 kg of roots and rhizomes, 800 kg of seeds and 39 kg of mushroom spawn among villagers in human-elephant conflict-prone areas of the three districts. The distributed planting material includes ginger, turmeric, taro, rapeseed, niger, coriander and sesame.
The crop choices are not random. They are based on factors including low palatability to elephants, suitability to local agro-climatic conditions, market demand and economic viability.
Ginger, turmeric and taro are particularly promising because elephants rarely consume them. Since much of their yield develops underground, the crops are also less vulnerable to damage when elephants pass through fields compared with paddy and maize, which can be both eaten and trampled.
The economic argument could make the approach especially relevant in conflict landscapes. According to Aaranyak, these alternative crops have consistent demand in local markets and can generate higher returns per unit of land than traditional cereals, potentially helping farmers reduce their financial exposure to crop raids.
Why this matters on World Elephant Day
Human-elephant conflict is often presented as a choice between protecting elephants and protecting farmers. The Assam initiative suggests that the two objectives do not necessarily have to be in opposition.
If farmers can earn from crops that elephants are less likely to eat, the economic incentive to cultivate highly vulnerable crops could decline, while the pressure for direct confrontation between people and elephants may also be reduced.
The approach is therefore less about keeping elephants out of the landscape and more about making coexistence economically viable for communities living alongside them.
For World Elephant Day, that is an important conservation message: protecting elephants cannot be separated from protecting the livelihoods of people who share their landscape.
The initiative currently covers villages across Udalguri, Baksa and Tamulpur, including 26 villages in Udalguri, 12 in Baksa and five in Tamulpur.
The experience also underlines a broader lesson for elephant conservation in Assam: reducing conflict may require solutions rooted not only in forests and wildlife management, but also in what is planted in the fields surrounding them.