Be Mains Ready

Approach:

• Establish link between food security and climate change.
• Importance of sustainable agriculture in the context of food security challenges posed by climate change.
• Give an idea of climate change and how will it impact agriculture.
• Suggest ways to ensure food security and sustainable agriculture with relevant examples.

Key Fodder Points:

Climate change and food security:

• At the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are targets to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition.
• According to the definition given by the World Food Summit in 1996, there are three main dimensions to food security: food availability, access to food, and food absorption.
  • Food availability: India’s food production, is highly vulnerable to climate change largely because the sector continues to be highly sensitive to monsoon variability and production is severely constrained by low yield growth.
  • Access: Displacement, loss of livelihood or damage to productive assets due to any extreme weather events will have a direct impact on household food security because of production shocks and declines that are projected under future climate change.
  • Absorption: Change in climatic conditions could lead to a reduction in the nutritional quality of foods (reduced concentration in proteins and minerals like zinc and iron). This will accelerate the largely neglected epidemic known as “hidden hunger” or micronutrient deficiency.

Reforms needed and Government Interventions

• The government of India has launched the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) to promote sustainable agriculture and to ensure food security.
• Resilient Intercropping System: To deal with delayed monsoon alternate crops of short duration varieties like black gram, groundnut can be grown etc. That will help in maintaining a source of income if the monsoon is delayed.
• Zero tillage Adoption of Zero Tillage will reduce the loss and increase the production. Zero-till (ZT) sowing minimizes losses due to lodging of wheat (bending of the stem).
• Efficient water use: Efficient water and nutrient management should be done to enhance efficiency. Methods like drip-irrigation must be used in place of flood irrigation to save water.
• Climate tolerant crops: The government should incentivize farmers to use climate-tolerant crop varieties. It will help farmers to deal with crop failures due to climate change. E.g. Pokkali Rice in Kerala which is a saline tolerant rice variety.
• Crop Diversification: Crop diversification refers to the addition of new crops or cropping systems to agricultural production on a particular farm. Crop diversification helps in agriculture sustainable and helps in maintaining ecological balance.
• Urban Agriculture: Urban agriculture, urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in or around urban areas. This can address major dimensions of food security.
• Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF): Practice like ZBNF leads to improvements in yield, soil conservation, seed diversity, quality of produce, household food autonomy, income, and health.