Nowadays, tomatoes are trending at Rs 100 per kg and ginger and garlic are touching Rs 150-200 per kg. The steep rise in prices punched into the pocket of an average household tells a bigger story of climate shocks. Even though India is the world’s second-largest producer of tomatoes and other vegetables but wholesome agriculture is facing a wide spectrum of challenges, such as stagnation in crop yields, declining soil organic matter, multi-nutrient deficiencies, shrinking arable land, water availability, cold supply chain and overall climate change is one of the biggest challenges. Farm output is vulnerable to changes in the climate as higher temperatures tend to reduce crop yields and increase pest infestations. Rainfed agriculture is primarily impacted due to variability in the number of rainy days.
To address climate change, recently the Union Cabinet gave the nod to set up a National Research Foundation (NRF), an apex body to promote, fund and mentor research to match up to global standards. The fine print of the NRF Bill is likely to be introduced in Parliament’s monsoon session starting July 20. To be enriched with Rs 50,000 crore funds, the NRF could be a game-changer in underlining the need for sensitive research to make climate-smart agriculture (CSA).
To minimise the greenhouse gas emission effects mainly caused by the imbalance usage of chemical fertilisers and to promote alternative fertilisers, the Union government recently capped the fertilisers subsidy up to Rs 3.69 lakh crore over three years till 2024-25. The savings from a reduction in fertiliser subsidies can also be ploughed into agricultural research in the face of climate change, a threat to food, livelihood and nutritional security for the ever-growing population.
As per a study by the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), climate change is expected to affect yields of crops such as rice, wheat, and maize by 7-8 percent, fruits and vegetables by less than 15-20 percent by 2025. Punjab wheat production had declined 16 percent in five years. The production fell from 178 lakh metric tonnes in the year 2017-18 to 149 lakh metric tonnes in 2021-22. Studies on rice and wheat suggest that wheat is sensitive to rising maximum temperatures and heat waves, while rice is vulnerable to increased minimum temperatures in the region.
It is hoped that the NRF will give impetus to research institutions, and R&D laboratories. This requires addressing a dissonance in research institutes wage a grim struggle for expertise, funds and infrastructure. By becoming a bridge between the two and enabling the top research institutes to hand-hold the less well-heeled institutions.
In India, there is little scope for bringing in more area under cultivation; therefore, growth in food grain production has to come largely through productivity enhancement. To enable farmers to improve crop yield and their income, they must have access to the latest research and development (R&D), which is the bedrock of sustainable agriculture.
Minuscule R&D Budget Unable to Tackle Challenges
The minuscule investments in R&D in India impede the ability of science and technology research to tackle multiple challenges faced by agriculture. The Central budget allocation for agricultural R&D was a meagre Rs 8,368 crore in FY 2021-22, Rs 8,513 crore in 2022-23 and the largest share of this amount is to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). A provision of Rs 5,877.06 crore had been made for ICAR including salary, pension, administrative and logistical expenses accounting for around 80 percent, with little left for research. For central agricultural universities, the budget allocation was Rs 599.45 crore only.
The total R&D expenditure in India as a percentage of agricultural GDP has been stagnant at 0.3 to 0.7 percent in the last two decades. It is much lower than in the US (2.8 percent), China (2.5 percent), South Korea (4.3 percent) and Israel (4.2 percent).
Interestingly, India has the largest agricultural R&D manpower that includes 27,500 scientists and more than one lakh support staff, not to mention several agencies in the sector and the expenditure involved in running them.
ICAR directly oversees 118 research institutes, including three central agricultural and four deemed universities, 64 research institutes, 17 national research centres, six national bureaus and 25 project directorates. Besides the nationwide R&D set up under the ICAR, there are 63 state agricultural universities. Despite such a large agricultural research network, the Indian system has failed to respond to the problems faced by its agriculture sector — be it cost-effectiveness of crop production, productivity, water scarcity, weatherproofing etc.
Agricultural R&D, however, still has a long way to go to move away from the ‘business-as-usual activities’. It needs to develop an end-to-end package of interventions and strategic policy support, tailored to the needs of particular crops and agro-ecologies in specific areas. The slogan ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan, Jai Anusandhan’ reiterates the need to bolster the support for agricultural science and technology.
To counter the adverse environmental effects of the second-generation problems of the Green Revolution such as land degradation and consequently reduced soil fertility, receding groundwater, factor productivity decline and biodiversity loss, a paradigm shift is needed towards the promotion of sustainable agriculture through conservation agriculture, organic farming, micro-irrigation, and nutrient-use efficiency.
Resource-conserving and climate-smart technologies such as zero-tillage, drip bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides now occupy the centre stage. Innovations have to be scaled up urgently around hybrid technology, biotechnology, protected cultivation, precision farming, bioenergy, crop biofortification, remote sensing, information and communication technology, etc. Drones, sensors, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things hold the potential to improve efficiencies in agri-food production, post-production management and agro-processing.
The Way Forward
To incarnate India into a $ 5 trillion economy by 2024-25, the agriculture sector should aim to contribute at least $1 trillion to this national effort. And to this end, technologies arising from enhanced investment in agricultural research hold the potential to provide the required momentum.
The bottom line is clear — National Research Foundation could propel R&D at large to make climate-smart agriculture key to India’s ambition to grow as an economic superpower.
The author is Vice-Chairman of Sonalika group, Vice Chairman (Cabinet minister rank) of Punjab Economic Policy and Planning Board. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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