Source: TH
Subject: Agriculture
Context: India is accelerating efforts to scale Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA) as climate change intensifies risks to food security, rainfed farming, and farm incomes.
About India needs Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA):
What is Climate-Resilient Agriculture?
- Climate-Resilient Agriculture refers to farming systems that sustainably increase productivity, enhance adaptation to climate variability, reduce greenhouse gas emissions where possible, and ensure food security.
- It integrates biotechnology (climate-tolerant and genome-edited crops), bio-inputs (biofertilisers, biopesticides), precision irrigation, soil health management, and AI-based advisories.
Trends / data points:
- 51% of India’s net sown area is rainfed, contributing nearly 40% of food production, making it highly climate-vulnerable.
- Over 75% of annual rainfall is concentrated in just 4 monsoon months, increasing drought–flood cycles.
- Rising heat stress, erratic rainfall, floods, droughts, and salinity are lowering yield stability.
Need for Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA):
- Food security pressure: Stable yields are required to feed a population projected to reach 1.7 billion, protecting against 10–40% projected losses in staples like wheat.
- Rainfed vulnerability: With 60% of Indian farmland being rainfed, CRA provides a lifeline for marginal farmers against increasingly erratic monsoon cycles.
- Resource sustainability: Transitioning to CRA halts the alarming depletion of groundwater and restores soil organic carbon, ensuring the long-term viability of land.
- Income stability: Diversified systems and stress-tolerant crops shield farmers from “poverty traps” caused by total crop failure during extreme weather events.
- Environmental protection: CRA practices like zero-tillage reduce methane emissions and residue burning, turning farms from carbon sources into vital carbon sinks.
Initiatives taken:
- NICRA (National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture):
- Strategic research, technology demonstration, and capacity building.
- Climate-resilient technologies demonstrated in 448 villages.
- National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA): Focus on rainfed areas, soil health, water use efficiency, and integrated farming.
- Crop diversification programmes: Under PM-RKVY, Krishi Unnati Yojana, AICRP-IFS, shifting from water-intensive crops to pulses, oilseeds, millets, nutri-cereals, agroforestry.
- Per Drop More Crop (PDMC): Promotes micro-irrigation with subsidies (55% for small farmers).
- KVKs & ICAR support: Frontline demonstrations, agro-advisories, seed and fodder banks, climate risk committees.
- BioE3 policy: Positions CRA as a key area for biotechnology-led climate solutions.
Challenges Associated with CRA:
- Adoption barriers: High upfront costs for micro-irrigation and conservation machinery deter smallholders who lack access to formal credit or long-term incentives.
- Bio-input quality: The market is flooded with unstandardized bio-fertilisers; poor efficacy leads to low farmer trust and a quick return to chemical farming.
- Slow seed rollout: While 1,800+ resilient varieties exist, the time lag in “lab-to-land” transfer means many farmers still use old, vulnerable local seeds.
- Digital divide: Despite high mobile penetration, low digital literacy and poor rural connectivity prevent farmers from utilizing real-time AI weather advisories.
- Policy fragmentation: Overlapping schemes like NMSA and PMKSY often lead to administrative silos, making it difficult for farmers to access holistic support.
- Climate volatility pace: Global warming is accelerating faster than current research cycles, often rendering newly developed adaptive measures obsolete within a decade.
Way Ahead for Climate-Resilient Agriculture in India:
- Accelerate the Deployment of Smart Seeds: Fast-track the transition from lab to land for genome-edited and climate-smart varieties to match the pace of climate shifts.
E.g. Scaling up the distribution of Sub1 rice varieties (flood-tolerant) in the flood-prone basins of Bihar and Assam.
- Institutionalize Bio-Input Quality Control: Establish rigorous regulatory frameworks and decentralized testing labs to ensure the reliability of organic and bio-fertillizers.
E.g. Implementing QR-code-based traceability for bio-inputs to guarantee nutrient content and purity for farmers in Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh.
- Close the Rural Digital Divide: Leverage the “Digital Agriculture Mission” to provide hyper-local, AI-driven weather and pest advisories to the last mile.
E.g. Utilizing community-led Digital Sakhis or Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) to bridge the literacy gap in using the Annavari or Meghdoot apps.
- Enhance Climate-Linked Financial Safety Nets: Shift from traditional crop insurance to parametric (weather-based) insurance that provides faster payouts during extreme events.
E.g. Integrating satellite-based remote sensing in PMFBY to automate damage assessment and speed up compensation for hailstorms in Maharashtra.
- Foster Integrated Landscape Management: Move beyond individual crop schemes toward a “landscape approach” that connects water, soil, and forest management for regional resilience.
E.g. Scaling the “Ridge-to-Valley” approach in watershed management under MGNREGA to recharge groundwater tables across the semi-arid Deccan Plateau.
Conclusion:
Climate-Resilient Agriculture is no longer optional for India’s food security and farmer livelihoods. While multiple initiatives exist, scale, coherence, and inclusiveness remain the key gaps. A unified national CRA roadmap can transform Indian agriculture into a productive, adaptive, and climate-secure system.
