My name is Falak Jalali. I am a PhD student in Geography. I work with farmers in Himachal Pradesh, a hilly state in northern India. Himachal Pradesh is part of the great Himalayan ranges, which span eight countries. Over the last decade, agriculture has shifted from subsistence to high-value horticulture crops, coupled with impacts of climate change, such as frequent landslides, which have made agricultural livelihoods precarious in the region. Himachal Pradesh ranks high on factors related to social development and health. For example, its rate of education is better than the national average. Despite this growth almost 80% of the population in Himachal Pradesh depends on agriculture and allied sectors like forest, fisheries, and livestock. During my preliminary research in the region over the past two summers, I understood that farmers have a connection with their agricultural land, which makes it more than just an economic commodity. In India, agricultural land is passed down from one generation to the other, making land a part of their ancestry and identity. While policies on agricultural development are often analyzed in economic terms such as yields, productivity, and income. My research focuses on the changing relations between agriculture in the context of climate change and the growing socio-economic status in rural Himachal Pradesh. My research uses concepts from feminist political ecology and emotional geography to develop a relational understanding of agricultural transition in India. I foreground farmers’ emotional and embodied experience of laboring for ginger and garlic, high-value horticulture crops supported by the Government for regional development. Due to the state’s varied elevation, the topography and agroclimatic conditions differ even within the administrative unit at the district level. This variation shapes farmers’ practices and performance in agricultural cultivation across the state.

My summer fellowship project was to spatially represent the emotional and embodied experience of farmers cultivating the same crops—ginger, and garlic—across the southernmost district of Himachal Pradesh, Sirmaur. I believe mapping farmers’ emotions will communicate the many different ways beyond economics that shape farmers’ agricultural decisions and actions. The only barrier was that I had no imagination for realizing this idea. All I had were stories of farmers and some GPS locations of farms in Sirmaur. This summer fellowship with the Studio has been critical to improving my research and progress in my program. My mentor at the Studio, Jay, really helped me to narrow and execute the idea in a meaningful way. The classes and the conversations at the Studio gave me the space and inspiration to think creatively about my project. The fellowship broadened my vision of the many possible forms the project can take. Jay introduced me to Blender and QGIS, and through that, I could depict and communicate the topography and varied space across the small district. Over the span of two months, I have interacted with two new software and was introduced to a whole new way of doing scholarships. This project is surely a collaborative project, and I could not have reached here in my research if not for the multiple conversations with all the mentors at the Studio and my cohort. I am excited to develop this work further. I plan to visit the research site over the winter, and now I have a refined understanding of what I need to focus on and engage with to spatially represent farmers’ emotions meaningfully.