For A Sustainable Farm Sector

A look at strategies and pathways to make Indian agriculture resilient in a changing climate and help the country fulfil commitments it made at COP26

- Arabinda K Padhee And Anthony Whitbread

INDIA’S PLEDGE of panchamrit (five-fold strategy) to fight climate change, announced during the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) at Glasgow, Scotland, has caught global attention. The country’s new commitments include reaching 500 GW of non-fossil fuel energy capacity by 2030; producing 50 per cent of energy requirements via renewable energy sources by 2030; a reduction of 1 billion tonnes of carbon by 2030; reducing the carbon emission intensity of the GDP by 45 per cent by 2030; and most importantly, achieving net-zero emissions by 2070. Here, we focus on agriculture and food systems and how India should fight the challenge of climate change in light of COP26.

India and 26 other countries signed the Sustainable Agriculture Policy Action Agenda at the summit to set a course of action to protect food systems and prevent loss of biodiversity against climate change. While Indian agriculture is adversely impacted by the vicissitudes of climate change, the sector also is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As per the Third Biennial Update Report submitted by India to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in early 2021, the agriculture sector contributes 14 per cent of the total GHG emissions (energy 75.01 per cent; industrial process and product use 8 per cent; and waste 2.7 per cent, as per 2016 data). Within the sector, 54.6 per cent of GHG emissions were due to enteric fermentation, followed by 17.5 per cent from rice cultivation, 19.1 per cent from fertiliser applied to agricultural soils, 6.7 per cent from manure management, and 2.2 per cent due to field burning of agricultural residues. Therefore, effective mitigation measures and appropriate adaptation technologies must be taken to reduce GHG emissions from the agriculture sector.