[Answered] Explain the need to adopt Climate Smart Agriculture practices to make Indian agriculture sustainable.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps guide actions to transform agri-food systems towards green and climate resilient practices.  

 CSA aims to achieve three main objectives:  

• Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes. 
• Adapting and building resilience to climate change.  
• Reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Indian agriculture sector provides livelihood for more than 50% of the population and contributes about 19% to the GVA of the country. The Indian agriculture sector is vulnerable to climate change and it will directly impact the daily lives of farmers.  

The need of Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to make Indian agriculture sustainable. 

• Enhanced resilience: Indian agriculture is highly dependent on Monsoon and prone to drought and other climate related shocks. Climate change is expected to reduce farm productivity. CSA will reduce vulnerability to drought, pests, diseases and other climate-related risks and shocks; and improve capacity to adapt and grow in the face of longer-term stresses like shortened seasons and erratic weather patterns. 
• Nutrition security and Farm income: India has a growing population which requires increased agricultural productivity to fulfill the demands of nutrition for the population. CSA will help produce more and better food to improve nutrition security and boost incomes. 
• Reduce emissions: As per the national GHG inventory, the agriculture sector emits 408 MMT of carbon-dioxide equivalent. For example, emission of 5.65 kg carbon dioxide equivalent of GHG per kg of rice.  CSA will help pursue lower emissions for each kilo of food produced, avoid deforestation from agriculture and identify ways to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. 
• Improving sustainability: Agriculture practices in many parts of India have become unsustainable due to over-use of fertilizers, over-exploitation of water etc. This has reduced fertility of soils and groundwater level. CSA will make agriculture sustainable. 

The uptake of Climate Smart Agriculture is need of the hour to ensure sustainability of Indian agriculture. This calls for revisiting policies to subsidize power and fertilizers, MSP and procurement and reorient them towards making the agriculture Climate smart. Methods like Zero Budget Natural Farming and Integrated Farming system could also be utilized.