India needs Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA)
Kartavya Desk Staff
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.
• 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.
Q. Examine the role of adaptive farming measures in mitigating the impact of climate change on staple crop yields. What are the limitations of such approaches, and how can India’s agricultural policy evolve? (15 M)