Central Hall – Climate Change & Agriculture

@prashanthamine

Mumbai: So the government has announced yet another Rs 10,000 crore relief package for farmers affected by recent torrential rains and people affected by natural calamities. Every monsoon or every year we have been experiencing natural calamities and some man made ones also. Our response to these has been incredibly naïve and deeply political.

World over farmers have benefited from technological advances and reforms in the agriculture sector. The same cannot be said to be true in India. Despite the Green Revolution of the 1960’s and the White Revolution of the 1970’s, it is still a mystery as to why the average farmer despite help feeding the population of the country continues to be plagued by poverty, indebtedness, exploitation and suicides.

For us agrarian reforms, technological advances and ancillary infrastructure have never gone hand-in-hand. We have some of the premier agriculture research institutes, top-notch scientists and agriculture universities and rank second in the world in the agriculture sector.

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The gains of these do not appear to have been uniformly distributed across the regions and the country at large. While the farmer may have a bumper harvest, at times he does not have ample storage facilities available in his nearby vicinity and neither can he afford to stockpile it in his possession.

Freeing the farmer from the clutches of the middleman, the money lender, he is still not free from the vice-like political grip on the agrarian cooperative movement. The farmer who was supposed to be at the core of the cooperative movement haplessly watches from the sidelines the political exploitation going on in his name. The Minimum Support Price (MSP) is always “Minimum” and not “Maximum”.

It is common knowledge how District Central Cooperative (DCC) Banks have been heavily politicized and badly mismanaged. There is no authentic data base on farmers, their accounts and their land holdings. 

Besides these problems that the farmer has to face, the effects brought about by Climate Change are beyond his control. Worst still there is no debate on the effects of climate change on agriculture in our parliament or state legislatures. Unseasonal rains, delays in onset of monsoon or prolonged wet spells, assured irrigation facility and natural calamities like cyclones have begun playing havoc with farmers as often they have to helplessly watch their harvest ready crops getting damaged by these heavy rains, unseasonal showers or natural calamities.

Whatever happened to the idea first mooted in 1982 and later on revived in 1999 that of interlinking of perennially flowing rivers of North India. The project idea was to divert the surplus waters from these rivers that were essentially the cause of devastating floods during the monsoons to perennially drought prone regions or regions where there is scarcity of water, boost irrigation potential and inland navigation.

Another issue that needs urgent attention is the unhealthy practice of stubble burning mostly practiced in north Indian states like Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The problem is not just restricted to India alone and is found prevalent in the USA, United Kingdom and Australia also.

There is research available in using farm stubble for making eco-friendly products. It needs government support and intervention, as solutions are there for the annual specter of pollution and deteriorating air quality in New Delhi this time of the year.

Everybody loves to sing paeans to the Dr M S Swaminathan committee report of 2006 on agriculture reforms, but drag their feet when it comes to implementing some of his recommendations. More than another agriculture revolution, what are urgently needed are some hard agriculture reforms and serious thought towards the effects of climate change on agriculture and our lives in general.