Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today made a strong case for increasing capital investment in key farm sector, which he said was continuously going down in the last few years.
"A key requirement is to substantially increase the capital investment in agriculture, which has been continuously going down in last few years," Pawar said, while addressing the Parliamentary Consultative Committee meeting of Agriculture here.
Investment in irrigation infrastructure, silos for food and feed, timely implementation of contingency planning, rural roads and power could enhance agriculture's resilience to climatic extremes, Pawar said.
He said, establishment of early warning systems of climatic risks, disease and pests could help in determining the potential food insecure areas and communities and in providing assistance to policy planners in arranging relief.
Focused agricultural research on development of more adaptive varieties of crops, livestock and fish in future climate and development of water and carbon conservation practices will also be useful, the minister added.
Pawar said agriculture has to become more competitive, efficient, and profitable and develop mechanism to reduce its vulnerability to climate change.
Farmers, scientists and policy-makers have to address these issues in totality and develop strategies to increase adaptive capacity, the minister added.
Talking about the government initiatives, he said that under Prime Minister's National Plan on Climate Change, eight National Missions are being launched on climate change and National Mission of Sustainable Agriculture is one of them.
Activities under these missions will give further impetus to government's efforts to face the challenges posed by climate change, Pawar added.
