Climate Resilient Agriculture

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines, climate resilient agriculture as “the ability of an agricultural system to anticipate and prepare for, as well as adapt to, absorb and recover from the impacts of changes in climate and extreme weather”. Climate change is influencing agriculture in India and throughout the world.This change poses a grave threat to food security and thereby endangers human life.Countries in the Indian subcontinent particularly India is more vulnerable owing to its huge population being still dependent on agriculture for their livelihood with poor coping mechanisms.India has to feed about 17.5% of the world population with just 2.4% of the land. This needs to be dealt with unconventional approaches with the goal of empowering the farmers with necessary resources.

The World Health Organization promotes climate resilient agricultural practices to gain triple win outcomes which are mainly enhanced productivity,resilience and carbon sequestration.Some of the climate resilient practices followed today are as follows

Adapting and mitigating the impact: Adopting stress tolerant crops with better suitability to the increasing heat(e.g. Millet, Sorghum), drought and flood conditions.In addition to this strong early warning systems should be in place for timely decision making in frost conditions.Short cycle varieties can be used to reduce water consumption and exposure to heat.Firebreaks and windbreakers introduction can be useful to protect crops from wildfires and strong winds respectively.National initiative on climate resilient agriculture (NICRA ) assesses impacts of climate change on Indian agriculture.This project involves phenotyping germplasm collections for climate induced stresses and development of stress tolerant varieties.
Promoting agroforestry: Agroforestry forms one of the important components in the fight against climate change. It can help sequester carbon, improves soil health and reduces soil erosion.The canopy cover lowers the evaporation rate from direct sunshine thereby improving the moisture content of the soil.Leaves from the tree enrich soil with organic matter.It is an environmentally sustainable practice against climate change.
Enhancing water efficiency: Check dams, farm ponds can help recharge the groundwater and increase the water level.Improved water storage and diversion facilities should be in place to conserve water .Techniques like drip irrigation can help in judicious use of water. Emphasis should be placed on reducing and recycling polluted water
Overall, a global effort is the need of the hour to help deal with the challenges of climate change and sustain agricultural activity to feed eight billion people and avoid food scarcity situations.The slogans like ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ by our leaders further inspires us common people to stand shoulder to shoulder with our farmers in these challenging times and tackle this problem globally and locally with climate resilient practices in agriculture.

soumya singh

University/College name : SVKM's Mithibai College