Framework of climate resilient farming

 The central government seeking to promote traditional agriculture and horticulture varieties is good news for the Northeast region. The region, being a living repository of traditional varieties, can lead the country in such a mission. The objective behind the proposed move by the central government is to build climate resilience of farmers who are dependent on rainfed cultivation. With over half of the country’s net sown area dependent on rain, the introduction of high-yielding varieties that require adequate irrigation support and chemical fertiliser is a challenging task. Even if such varieties are pushed through promotional campaigns or various central and state government schemes and programmes, farmers are reluctant to replace the traditional varieties with high-yielding varieties due to a dearth of adequate irrigation facilities during the dry season. Traditional varieties support only subsistence farming, while high-yielding varieties (HYV) can fetch higher income from the same plot of land, which influences farmers in areas with irrigation support to go for high-yielding varieties. Irrigation sources are primarily rivers, lakes, or ponds and groundwater. Climate change impact resulting in erratic rainfall has resulted in many irrigation schemes becoming defunct and unsustainable. Drastic change in rainfall patterns owing to climate change impact has compelled many progressive farmers, who started cultivating HYVs to tap market potential, to become dependent on rainfed cultivation again in states like Assam where agriculture is predominantly rainfed due to poor irrigation coverage. The HYV seeds play a crucial role in the country’s food security by ensuring higher yields compared to traditional varieties by reducing export dependence. Increasing food demand triggered by the burgeoning population in the country has made HYVs a necessity, as traditional varieties with lower yields cannot meet the demand and make the country self-reliant. The pragmatic choice, according to experts, is to promote both traditional varieties and HYVs. The tougher challenge is to find a balance between the two and identify areas to achieve such a goal. Farmers will not be keen to continue cultivating traditional varieties if it is not incentivised by the government by ensuring higher remunerative prices compared to HYV. If they are unable to get access to irrigation facilities or if irrigation schemes have become defunct and if their rainfed cultivation remains non-remunerative, then they will be more inclined to look for an alternative livelihood and withdraw from agriculture. The conversion of vast tracts of agricultural land in many areas of the state, mostly along the highways, for non-agricultural purposes is reflective of the changing ground realities in the agriculture sector. When farmers stop cultivating traditional varieties and completely shift to a HYV or withdraw from agriculture for alternative livelihoods, then the traditional varieties also gradually start becoming scarce, and in the process some of the traditional varieties have already been lost. The Ministry of Agriculture organising a multi-stakeholder convention on “Reviving Agro-Biodiversity in Rainfed Areas through Traditional Varieties for Climate-Resilient Agriculture” in New Delhi is a timely initiative to push climate-resilient agriculture. The deliberations at the convention highlighted that nearly half of India’s seed requirement is met through informal seed systems in which farmers procure traditional varieties from other farmers storing it. Strong policy support by the central and state governments for adequate financial support to community-managed seed banks or individual farmers’ storage of traditional varieties will be crucial to realise the government’s goal of promoting traditional agriculture. This can be possible only when the modern agriculture market also plays its part in the branding of traditional varieties and ensures that farmers get higher prices for their produce by motivating buyers to pay higher prices for such produce grown through organic farming by focusing on high nutritional values. Farmers will be keen to undertake commercial cultivation of traditional varieties only when they are assured of higher returns from the modern agriculture and horticulture markets. The significance of the Rainfed Area Development (RAD) component of the Rashtriya Krishi Vikash Yojana has grown due to climate change impact influencing rainfall patterns and the availability of water for rainfed cultivation. The operational guideline of this component highlights that RAD promotes enhancing soil productivity through crop diversification and crop rotation, seeks to expand protective irrigation from rainwater sources through efficient water management, and encourages indigenous seeds with better adaptability while ensuring their quality, diversity, and timely availability for climate resilience. It aims at promoting an integrated farming system with an emphasis on multi-cropping, rotational cropping, inter-cropping, and mixed-cropping practices with allied activities like horticulture, livestock, fishery, plantation, apiculture, etc., to enable farmers not only in maximising the farm returns for sustaining livelihood but also in mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events. Without adequate market linkage and government support, individual success stories of conservation of traditional seeds or community-managed seed banks will remain mere subjects and themes of academic conferences and workshops. The right strategy and framework are needed for the promotion of traditional varieties.