Covid-19 Calls For A New Agriculture

Context: The pandemic underscores the need to redefine our relationship with nature.

Issues with our agricultural practice

• Water stress: Agriculture takes up 90% of India’s water. And 80% of that water is cornered by just three crops: rice, wheat and sugarcane.
  • Maintaining current levels of production of water-intensive crops like rice and wheat could prove impossible in the face of groundwater depletion in states like Punjab and Haryana.
• Excess buffer stock: Food stocks over the last decade have greatly exceeded the “buffer norm” of 31 million tonnes for wheat and rice.
  • Even after all the additional withdrawals following Covid-19, the central pool still had 63 million tonnes in stock in October 2020.
• Skewed public procurement: Public procurement is still overwhelmingly focused only on rice and wheat.
  • Farmers continue to grow these water-intensive crops even in water-short regions primarily because of an assured market in the form of public procurement, which still covers only a very low proportion of India’s crops, regions and farmers

Way Forward:

• Crop diversification: The replacement crops are mainly pulses, oilseeds and Nutri-cereals suited to each agro-ecological region.
  • The nutritional content of our proposed crop mix is superior, with a much higher content of dietary fibre, vitamins, minerals, protein and antioxidants, as also a lower glycemic index.
  • The impact on farmers’ net incomes is likely to be positive both because of lower input requirements and cost of production as also higher wholesale prices for replacement crops.
  • Recent increases in minimum support prices have tended to favour our replacement crops and not so much rice and wheat.
• Diversified procurement:
  • Raising public procurement of rice from eastern India would mean that this water-abundant region need not continue to depend on groundwater scarce regions for its supply of foodgrains.
  • The locally procured crops should be incorporated into Anganwadi supplementary nutrition and school mid-day meal programmes. This will have two advantages:
    • Provides a large and steady market for farmers.
    • Will help in tackling India’s twin syndemic of malnutrition and diabetes.

Conclusion: These agri-reforms put together provide a significant pathway for resolving India’s multiple crises of water, farming, health and nutrition.