For Climate smart agriculture 

News: India has set a carbon neutrality target for the year 2070 at the CoP26 in Glasgow. Union Budget for 2022-23 has also listed climate action and energy transition as one of the four main priorities for the country in the coming decades.  

Although agriculture has been a major contributor to climate change problem, yet the budget fails to have sufficient provisions to combat it.  

What has been agriculture sector’s contribution to the climate change issue? 

Agriculture contributes 73% of the country’s methane emissions, and India is the world’s third-largest emitter of methane. 

Agriculture sector also emits huge amount of carbon-dioxide equivalent, and rice cultivation is the third-highest source (17.5 per cent) of GHG emissions in Indian agriculture. 

According to the Sixth Assessment Report IPCC 2021, paddy fields are anthropogenic sources of atmospheric nitrous oxide and methane, which are up to 200 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in driving temperature increase in 20 years. 

What are the causes for agriculture sector’s increasing contribution to climate change in India? 

The environmental damage due to agriculture is mainly the result of the following:

– Various kinds of subsidies on urea: These subsidies also lead to an excessive production of wheat and rice in the country, which leads to record stock in country’s central pool. For example: Rice stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) are seven times the buffer norms for rice. All this does not just reflect inefficient use of scarce capital, but also leads to release of excessive amount of greenhouse gases (GHG).

– Canal irrigation and power for irrigation

– Minimum support prices (MSP) and procurement policies concentrated on a few states and largely on two crops, rice, and wheat.  

What has been Govt’s announcement for sustainable agriculture in the budget? 

The budget mentions chemical-free natural farming in a 5 km wide corridor along the river Ganga, support for millets, and increased domestic production of oilseeds and kisan drones.

Although these are positive steps, but they don’t assure that the environmental damage already done by the sector can be undone.

What are the additional steps required? 

GHG Inventories: India does not report nitrous oxide emissions in its national GHG inventories. When methods like intermittent flooding are applied to reduce methane emissions it is assumed that they will lead to a decrease in overall emissions but on the contrary they increase nitrous oxide emissions which goes unaccounted.  

Emissions due to other factors like application of fertilisers, energy operations like harvesting, transportation are also not accounted for in the GHG emissions. There is need for including these to get a wholistic picture of agriculture sector’s emissions. 

Carbon tax: According to the IMF, the world needs a carbon tax of $75 per tonne by 2030 to reduce emissions to a level consistent with a 2^oC warming target. India does not have an explicit carbon-price yet, but many countries have begun to implement carbon pricing. Introduction of an indicative carbon pricing can incentivise green growth. 

Water security: The Economic Survey 2021-22 points out that the country is over-exploiting its groundwater, primarily due to paddy cultivation. This calls for revisiting policies to subsidise power and fertilisers, MSP and procurement and reorient them towards minimising GHG emissions.  

Awareness: Farmer groups and the private sector can be mobilised to develop carbon markets in agriculture by rewarding them for improving farming practices to lower GHG emissions. 

Source: This post is based on the article “For Climate smart agriculture” published in The Indian express on 14^th Feb 2022.