Climate change and its adverse effects on Indian agriculture are now a reality. These effects take the form of drought, frost, flooding, increases in temperature and fewer but intense rainy days, and are being studied by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and other institutions in 100 selected districts across the country.
One of those districts, Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh, was found to have turned 'arid' from 'semi-arid' over the last thirty years.
According to SP Wani, who coordinates a project on water management at the Icrisat (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics), in the black and red soils of Nalgonda, the number of days in a season that are favourable to crop growth have fallen by 10-15 days, compared to the figure in 1972.
"This increases the failure rate to three out of five years, as farmers don't know about the reduced crop cycle and continue to use 120-day seeds even when 110-day seeds are available in the market," he told reporters at a press meet at Icrisat on Wednesday.
He said such drastic changes had not been reported from other districts so far, as long-term weather data was not available. Parbhani in Maharashtra was also a close case, where due to extreme temperatures, sorghum may not grow in rabi in 10-15 years.
While rain-fed areas are vulnerable, they also have a huge potential to improve yields by four to five times. This could be tapped with a consortium approach by bringing in different partners that have access to different inputs as is being done in watershed management, he said.
Icrisat on Tuesday hosted a roundtable meet on the problems resulting from climate change as they affect the rain-fed areas, which account for up to 70 per cent of Indian agriculture. The meet, set in the run-up to the drafting of the 12th Five year Plan, was jointly organised by JSW-Times of India Earthcare Initiative and Icrisat.
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According to Icrisat director general William D Dar, the variability of climate has been increasing year after year, and water-scarcity is expected to increase in the next 15 years. "We need science and technology, private sector participation and political will, but small-holder farmers in rain-fed areas are key to tackling the effects of climate change on agriculture".
Dar said Icrisat had developed drought- and heat-tolerant products in at least five crops including groundnut, pigeon pea, chick pea and pearl millet. It was not just new products but also natural resource management that was needed.
Icrisat's climate-resilient agriculture project was found to have improved productivity by 30-65 per cent in Karnataka, and similar projects have evoked interest from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Wani said.
ICAR is conducting a demonstration project on climate-resilient farming for 1,000 farmers from each of the selected 100 districts and plans to scale it up next year. This is part of a Rs 350-crore, two-year initiative on climate-resilient agriculture, according to AK Singh, deputy director general, ICAR.
According to R Gopichandran of the Gujarat Energy Research and Management Institute, there are several cases of local solutions to the problem of climate change, and the meet would try to mainstream such local knowledge. He said there were 209 local action plans, and the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA) was also working on a major plan with a 'bottom-up' approach.