Small farmers need at least $75b to adapt to climate shocks: IFAD President

Investments worth around $75 billion is required for small-scale farmers in India to adapt to the impact of climate change and bringing finance to rural areas is a critical challenge ahead for rural communities across the world and in India, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Alvaro Lario said. In an interview to PTI, Lario said for IFAD in India, the three big questions are, “how do we make agriculture more remunerative for farmers, how do we enhance productivity at the same time as we're tackling a lot of the climate shocks and how do we move from food security to nutrition security.”

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Founded in 1977 in response to a global food crisis, IFAD is a specialised United Nations agency and an international financial institution that tackles hunger and poverty in rural communities. Asked about the impact of climate change on the rural sectors, especially on small and marginal farmers, Lario said it's a key focus.

“Small-scale farmers need approximately at least 75 billion US dollars to adapt to many of these climate shocks,” Lario said. According to the 10th agriculture census of 2015-16, small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land account for 86.2 per cent of all farmers in India, but own just 47.3 per cent of the farming land.

“In case of India we're seeing seasonal water scarcity, rising temperatures, more frequent droughts, so there's a lot of investments that can actually support these small-scale farmers globally. In global climate finance, what we're seeing is that these small-scale producers, hundreds of millions of rural people, are only receiving less than one per cent of the overall global climate finance,” he said.