Climate-smart Agriculture, Productivity and Food Security in India

Abstract

This article evaluates the importance of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in promoting sustainable agricultural development and ensuring food security and mitigating the negative impacts of climatic changes on agricultural productivity in India. A range of CSA technologies, practices and services have been initiated in climate-smart villages as adaptation strategies for coping with climate risks to ensure stability and sustainability in agricultural production. The farmers using CSA adaptation strategies were found to have achieved higher output, yield and return compared to those who did not. There are exciting opportunities for scaling out and immense potentials of these strategies for enhancing crop yields and farm incomes and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Strengthening agricultural extension service and agricultural finance to achieve smart farming practices/technologies by linking climate finance to traditional agricultural finance could play a significant role in scaling out the CSA practices and technologies to make agriculture more sustainable and climate-resilient and a viable source of livelihood and food security for millions of farmers in the country. Zero budget natural farming as a climate-resilient farming system can enhance food and nutritional security, enabling farmers to improve soil fertility and yields through lower costs, risk and irrigation requirements, thus protecting the ecosystem by improving soil organic matter, water retention and biodiversity and reducing air and water pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions.