Doubling Down on Climate-smart Agriculture

Indian agriculture being a gamble of monsoons, crop yields continue to be climate sensitive and the fluctuations in temperature and rainfall pattern adversely affect crops productivity, thus threatening food security in India. In India, climate change has triggered an increase in temperatures by 0.6 °C to 25.1 °C between 1901 and 2018, causing shifts in monsoon patterns. According to government reports, productivity of most crops is likely to decrease 10-40 per cent by 2100 due to increases in temperature, rainfall variability, and decreases in irrigation water. The major impacts of climate change will be on rain fed or un-irrigated crops, which are cultivated in nearly 60 per cent of cropland. A temperature rise by 0.5°C in winter is projected to reduce rain fed wheat yield by 0.45 tonnes per hectare in India. Government of India's economic survey (2018) estimated that the annual loss of $ 9-10 billion was due to the adverse effects of climate change. To overcome this, the Government of India highlighted the significance of a multi-stakeholder approach in addressing climate challenges and took up climate smart agriculture measures since 2011 to support the small and marginal farmers, who constitute 85 per cent of the farming population.

On January 18 the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MOA&FW), Government of India, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) jointly launched the ‘Investment Forum for Advancing Climate Resilient Agrifood Systems in India’ in New Delhi. This initiative aims to develop an investment and partnership strategy to advance climate resilient agrifood systems among the government, private sectors, and farmers’ organisations and financial institutions in India.

The government of India has been active in this space and taken the lead in building climate resilient agrifood systems through prioritised actions in mitigation and adaptation domains since 2011 with the formation of National Innovation on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), a network project of the Indian Council

of Agricultural Research (ICAR) with an outlay of Rs 350 crore. The project aims to enhance the resilience of Indian agriculture, covering crops, livestock and fisheries to climatic variability and climate change through development and application of improved production and risk management technologies.

The government has implemented the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) that provides the overarching framework for climate actions, through national missions in specific areas. The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), one of the Missions under NAPCC, includes programmatic interventions like Soil Health Card, Paramparagat Krishi

Vikas Yojana, Mission Organic Value Chain Development for Northeastern Region, Rainfed Area Development, National Bamboo Mission and Sub-mission on Agro-forestry. Besides, the NMSA aims at promoting location specific improved agronomic practices through soil health management, enhanced water use efficiency, judicious use of chemicals, crop diversification.

In addition, the country has many other schemes in the last 13 years such as the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC), Climate Smart Village, Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojna (PMSKY), Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY), Soil Health Card Scheme, National Water Mission (NWM), Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojna (PKVY), Biotech-kisan, Neem Coated Urea, National Livestock Mission which helped in developing climate resilient technologies for various crops under state of the art climate change research facilities established at several institutes across the country.

In a reply to question in Rajya Sabha on December 15, 2023, Arjun Munda, Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare revealed that since 2014 onwards, National Agricultural Research System under the aegis of ICAR has released 2380 varieties of different field crops of which 1971 varieties of cereals (913), oilseeds (335), pulses (364), forages crops (106), fibre crops (189), sugarcane (54) and potential (underutilized) crops (10) are climate-resilient with tolerance to one or more biotic and/or abiotic stresses. Among these, 429 field crop varieties are highly tolerant to extreme abiotic stresses including drought/ moisture stress (240); waterlogging/ submergence (72); salinity/ alkalinity/sodic soils (58); heat stress (42) and Cold/ Frost (17). During the same period, 487 varieties of horticultural crops have also been released which include 22 climate resilient varieties including 6 for high temperature tolerance (2 each of potato and tomato and 1 each of spinach and radish); 12 for drought tolerance (4 of cassava, 3 of coconut; 2 of taro and 1 each of greater yam, white yam and sweet potato); 3 of potato for water use efficiency and 1 of cassava for salinity tolerance.

The minister further noted that under National Food Security Mission (NFSM), assistance is given through State/ Union Territory to the farmers for interventions like cluster demonstrations on improved package of practices, demonstrations on cropping system, seed production, distribution of High Yielding Climate Resilient Varieties (HYVS)/ hybrids, cropping system-based trainings etc. Under NFSM, States/icar Institutes/

State Agricultural Universities/ Krishi Vigyan Kendras are organising latest crop production technology demonstrations/ Cluster Frontline Demonstrations/ Front Line Demonstrations on newly released varieties including climate resilient varieties. During the breeder seed indent finalisation, the states are encouraged to produce and distribute seeds of climate resilient varieties. Further under NFSM total 210 seed hubs of pulses (150), oilseeds (35) and millets (25) have been established for breeder and quality seed production of newly released climate resilient varieties.

Funding and R&D initiatives

On the research front, the minister observed that 57 institutes of ICAR are working on development of climate resilient varieties of crops and technologies for increasing the adaptive capacity of crops with respect to global warming. Total funds allocated to the institutes involved for research and development of varieties during 2020-21 to 2023-24 is Rs 3456.11 crore. ICAR launched a flagship network project namely, NICRA in 2011 for developing the climate resilient varieties and technologies for various abiotic stresses. Since 2019-20 to 2023-24, a total budget of Rs 219.98 crore has been allocated for this scheme. Total 68 climate resilient technologies/ techniques have been demonstrated in 454 villages at 1585 of farmers’ fields during 2014-2023.

A National Phenomics Facility has been established with a total cost of Rs 43.83 crore at Icar-indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi for precisely screening the material for

drought and heat tolerance for their further use in breeding of climate resilient varieties.

ICAR initiated the research on genome editing in rice during 2018-22 with a total funding of Rs 6.71 crore CRISPR Crop Network (ICAR) on “Targeted improvement of stress tolerance, nutritional quality and yield of crops using genome editing” has been launched with a total funding of Rs 7.4 crore during 2022-25. In addition, during the Budget Announcement (2024), Rs 500 crore have been allotted to ICAR for “Enhancing climate resilience and ensuring food security with Genome Editing tools” during 2023-26 in major field and horticultural crops.

In India, where agriculture plays a vital role in the economy and the sustenance of millions of people, the need for climate-friendly agricultural practices has become increasingly important. Fortunately, several agri companies in India have recognised this urgency and are pioneering sustainable approaches to farming.

Joining hands with the government, companies such as ITC, Waycool, Unnati Agritech, SLCM, Aquaconnect, Greenscape Agrisolutions, Harvestearth Technologies, and many others are prioritising environmental sustainability, resilience, and adaptation to climate change, while also striving to improve farmer livelihoods and food security. Through innovative technologies, precision agriculture, and eco-friendly solutions, these companies are leading the way in building a more sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural sector in India.

Way forward

Climate change has profound implications for India, particularly affecting its economically vulnerable rural population which is largely dependent on climate sensitive agricultural livelihoods. Indian agriculture is susceptible to extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, cyclones, and soil salinity. Climate mainstreaming into agrifood systems requires much larger investments from global climate finance, domestic budgets, and the private sector. The Investment Forum for Advancing Climate Resilient Agrifood Systems launched in January facilitated the identification of national priorities and policy platforms for financing climate resilient agrifood systems. It facilitated key stakeholders to provide insights on several opportunities that can be leveraged through regional collaboration on climate-smart food system initiatives and suggest probable arrangements to maximise resource consolidation, route catalytic findings and support large-scale climate advocacy campaigns.