Why does India need climate resilient agriculture systems and how does climate change affect agricultural production and sustainable mitigation?
Respected Sir
Rk Naresh
Why India Needs Climate-Resilient Agriculture Systems
How Climate Change Affects Agricultural Production
Sustainable Mitigation Strategies
Conclusion
India needs climate-resilient agriculture systems to address the vulnerabilities of its diverse climate zones, ensure food security for its growing population, protect rural livelihoods, and sustainably manage natural resources. Climate change impacts agricultural production through altered rainfall patterns, increased temperatures, extreme weather events, and pest and disease proliferation. Adopting sustainable mitigation strategies, such as climate-resilient crop varieties, improved water management, soil health practices, diversification, and integrated farming systems, can help mitigate these impacts and promote long-term agricultural sustainability.
India has experienced several climate-related disasters in recent years, including heatwaves, droughts, floods, and landslides. These extreme weather events have led to significant crop losses and reduced yields, posing a threat to food security. Climate Resilient Agriculture involves sustainable agricultural practices that enhance productivity, mitigate risks, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By adopting climate-resilient agriculture, farmers can ensure food security in the face of extreme weather events and climate change. Growing different crops together in the same field or integrating trees with crops can enhance biodiversity, reduce soil erosion, and increase climate resilience. In many cases, conservation agriculture has shown to reduce farming systems' greenhouse gas emissions and enhance their role as carbon sinks. Conservation Agriculture can increase the ability of small farmers to adapt to climate change by reducing vulnerability to drought and enriching the local natural resource base. Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns often result in lower crop yields due to water scarcity caused by drought, heat waves and flooding. These effects of climate change can also increase the risk of several regions suffering simultaneous crop failures. Warming temperatures bring new pests into agricultural areas, requiring changes in farming practices such as pest management, crop selection, and adaptation techniques to combat reduced yields and increased drought caused by climate change. The key resource conservation-based technologies are in situ moisture conservation, rainwater harvesting and recycling, efficient use of irrigation water, conservation agriculture, energy efficiency in crop production and irrigation and use of poor quality water. At the farm level, several sustainable cropping practices, i.e., crop sequencing, arrangement, and management techniques, can ensure that arable crop production is robust enough to buffer against current climate risks and adapt to future climatic conditions. Agroforestry production is also under threat because of adverse climate change impacts such as depletion of natural resources, predominance of insect pests, diseases and unwanted species, increased damage on agriculture and forests, and enhanced food insecurity. However, it is a major source of hazardous greenhouse gases (methane and nitrous oxide), which contribute to the greenhouse effect and climate change. This climate change leads to higher temperatures and unanticipated rainfall across the country, resulting in reduced crop yields and overall food production.
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