Agriculture and Climate Change in India Siddhartha ( Pipal Tree, India)

1. Agriculture and Climate Change in India Siddhartha (Pipal Tree, India)

2. Climate change and India • Already weather patterns are changing in India, with unpredictable and erratic rainfall, floods and drought seriously affecting agricultural operations. • In future coastal areas will find an increase in salinity, again affecting agriculture and drinking water. • In the long run the melting of the Himalayan glaciers will increase floods to begin with and inundate coastal areas. Eventually there will less water in the rivers, thus affecting agricultural production, and creating climate refugees.

3. Staple food crops and population dependency

4. Climate change and rice production In India, rice production is likely to decrease by almost a tonne per hectare if the temperature goes up by 2oC.

5. By 2050, about half of India’s wheat production area could get heat-stressed, with the cultivation period becoming smaller, affecting productivity. For each 1oC rise in mean temperature, wheat yield losses in India are likely to be around 7 million tonnes per year, or around USD1.5 billion at current prices.

6. Food inflation Food prices have been rising each year in India. Food inflation in India was 10.81% in June this year. Pressure remained on pulses, vegetables and potatoes. Potatoes turned costlier by 73%, pulses by 28.26% and vegetables by 24.11% on annual basis. Eggs, meat and fish prices were up by 16% and milk by 8.01%.

7. The India State Hunger Index 2008 by the International Food Policy Research Institute Malnutrition in India Malnutrition is more common in India than in Sub-Saharan Africa. One in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.About 50 per cent of all childhood deaths are attributed to malnutrition.In India, around 46% of all children below the age of three are too small for their age, 47% are underweight and at least 16% are wasted. Many of these children are severely malnourished.

8. Loss of multiple cropping In South Asia, the biggest blow to food production is expected to come from the loss of multiple cropping zones. The worst-affected areas are predicted to be the double-and triple-cropping zones. To offset most of this loss, an effort must be made to convert today’s single-cropping areas into two-crop zones. This can first and foremost be done by efficient water harvesting and equitable management.

9. Pulses villages • In the 2011-12 Union budget Rs.300 crores has been allocated under the RashtriyaKrishiVikasYojana (RKVY) for the development of 60,000 villages of pulses crops. • The scheme targets areas that are rain-fed and do not have access to irrigation. • The cost of protein in the diet is going up and Pulses Villages could help to end protein hunger. But this programme has not been implemented properly.

10. Importance of promoting pulses (legumes/lentils) • The gap between demand and supply in the case of pulses is nearly 4 million tonnes. • Farmers appear interested in the cultivation of pulses, both due to the prevailing high prices and due to these crops requiring less irrigation water. • Such high value, but low water requiring crops also fix nitrogen in the soil. • Before chemical fertilizers became popular, cereal-legume rotation was widely adopted for soil fertility replenishment.

11. Oilseed production in India • Fluctuations of temperature, especially during flowering time, will affect oilseed production in India. • The major oilseeds grown in India are groundnut, rapeseed (a variety of mustard) and mustard, sesame, castor, linseed, sunflower, and soybean. • Among the edible oilseeds, groundnut takes up about 65% of the area under oilseed cultivation and accounts for nearly half of the indigenous edible oil production. • This is followed by rapeseed-mustard, which accounts for nearly 30% of the area.

12. Adaptation package for rain-fed areas • A special package for adaptation should be developed for rain-fed areas based on minimising risk. • The production model should be diversified to include crops, livestock, fisheries, poultry and agro forestry; • Home gardens should be promoted to make up shortfalls in food and nutrition from climate-related losses; • Farm ponds, fertiliser trees and biogas plants must be promoted in all semi-arid rain-fed areas which constitute 60% of our cultivated area.

13. Indigenous cattle Indigenous cattle are much better suited in the context of climate change than hybrid varieties. But breed improvements of indigenous cattle must be carried out. The right kind of feed mixtures can improve milk yields and reduce methane emissions.

14. Community seed banks Decentralised seed production programmes involving local communities, to address the crisis of seed availability. Seeds of the main crops and contingency crops (for a delayed/failed monsoon, or floods) as well as seeds of fodder and green manure plants specific to the agro ecological unit must be produced and stocked.

15. Short-duration crop varieties and crop substitution • Developing short-duration crop varieties (especially wheat) that can mature before the peak heat phase sets in. • Developing strategies for crop substitution where needed. Wheat displacement with millets, tubers like potato, yams and cassava.

16. Value addition and small scale units Value addition to primary products have to be attended to at the village level. Self-help groups of women in food processing needs to be promoted.

17. Rotting food grains Officials say that, in all, about 6 million tonnes of grain worth at least $1.5 billion (955.5 million pounds) could perish this year. Analysts say the losses could be far higher because more than 19 million tonnes are now lying in the open, exposed to searing summer heat and monsoon rains. Rats also eat up a sizeable amount of grain.

18. Need for modern grain storage facilities Apart from promoting storage at the household and community levels a national grid of ultra-modern grain storage facilities must be urgently created. (In addition to over 250 million tonnes of food grains, we will soon be producing over 300 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables.) Unless processing and storage are improved, post-harvest losses and food safety concerns will continue to grow.

19. Millets in the PDSWe should also expand the scope of the Public Distribution System by including millets in the food basket.

20. Credit and insurance will be needed for small farmers, especially in dry-land areas.

21. Pests and crop loss Evidences indicate that pests cause 25% loss in rice, 5-10% in wheat, 30% in pulses, 35% in oilseeds, 20% in sugarcane and 50% in cotton

22. Pest control strategies • An early warning system should be put in place to monitor changes in pest and disease profiles and predict new pest and disease outbreaks. The overall pest control strategy should be based on integrated pest management because it takes care of multiple pests in a given climatic scenario. • Bio-pesticides comprise a major component of IPM. Most of the bio-pesticides are host-specific. • A number of plant products such as azadirachtin (neem), pyrethrum, nicotine, etc. are also valuable as bio-pesticides. In India, more than 160 natural enemies have been studied for their utilization against insect pests.

23. Climate risk managers • The government needs to set up, in each of the 128 agro-climatic zones, a Climate Risk Management Research and Training Centre. • These centres should develop alternative cropping patterns to suit different weather probabilities. • Along with a climate literacy movement, a woman and a man from every Panchayat will have to be trained as Climate Risk Managers. • We will then have over half-a-million trained Climate Risk Managers, well versed in the science and art of climate change adaptation and mitigation.