Our Farm Income And Nutritional Challenge Amid Climate Change

Livemint     18th October 2021     Save    
QEP Pocket Notes

Context: Embracing sustainable agriculture improves farm incomes and nutrition security in a climate-changing world.

Issues faced by Indian farmers

  • Increasing vulnerability to climate change: India is one of the most vulnerable. Higher ambient temperatures, less predictable rains, frequent droughts and cyclones will only worsen in the years ahead.
  • Marginal Impact of Green revolution in rain fed area, which accounts 60% of Indian farmers. Rain-fed farmers practise low-resource agriculture, have low productivity.
  • Slowest income growth in agriculture among all sectors of India’s economy.
  • Increase in Input Cost: In irrigated areas, a typical farmer now uses 3.5 times more fertilizer than in 1970 to get the same output.
    • As much as 78% of this fertilizer is lost to the environment, causing soil, air and water pollution.
  • Nutritional Challenges: Input-intensive agriculture has made us calorie-secure, about 22% of adults are underweight and 38% and 59% of children under the age of five are stunted and anaemic.
  • Lack of adoption and policy support for sustainable agriculture: that limits the mainstreaming of sustainable agriculture
    • SAP adaptation at low 4% of farmers.
    • India’s National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture receives only 0.8% of the agricultural budget of Rs 1.42 trillion.

        Policy response to vulnerabilities in agriculture

        • Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) report identified economically remunerative, socially inclusive and environmentally benign 16 sustainable agriculture practices (SAPs), such as
          • Organic farming, natural farming, integrated farming systems, agroforestry and precision farming.
        • A few states are already at the vanguard of this revolution like
          • Sikkim is a 100% organic state, and Andhra Pradesh aims at 100% natural farming by 2027.
        • Practices towards climate resilient agriculture: Like naturally-farmed paddy and banana fields withstood heavy cyclones in Andhra Pradesh, whereas adjoining fields with conventionally harvested crops were devastated.

              Way forward: Promoting sustainable agriculture Practices through

              • Knowledge exchange and capacity building: Many of these practices are knowledge- and skill-intensive. Farmers need handholding in the early phases.
                • Government must leverage the presence of more than 1,000 civil society organizations for promoting farmer-to-farmer capacity building for sustainable agriculture.
              • Technology innovation and adoption to mechanize labour-intensive activities associated with SAPs through
                • Atal Innovation Mission to Incentivize innovators and entrepreneurs to encourage the development of farm implements for SAPs.
                • Support local micro-businesses through state livelihood missions to produce and sell ready-made inputs such as vermicompost and organic fertilizers.
              • Restructure government support to agriculture through effective farmer engagement and transition support for short-term losers.
                • Incentivize outcomes such as annual nutrition output per hectare and enhanced ecosystem services such as water conserved or desertification reversed.
                • Outcome-based support could encourage innovation among farmers and allow the adoption of alternative approaches, including SAPs.
              • Enhance research and development support for impact studies comparing these with conventional farming across agro-climatic zones as
                • Focusing on landscape-level long-term impact studies could inform further scale-ups of SAPs even in irrigated areas.
              • Broaden the national policy focus from food to nutrition security, looking beyond yields and measuring annual nutrition output per hectare.
                              QEP Pocket Notes