Accelerating agro-meteorological services vital to climate change

The panel indicates that “rain-dependent agriculture could be cut in half by 2020 as a result of climate change”.

Rainfall patterns in India are already impacted by climate change.

According to a recent United Nations Environment Programme report, the national average monsoon rainfall has shown a “neutral-weak negative trend” while the less important summer rainfall has risen by 20 per cent in the five decades' period between 1950 and 2004.

Further, the spread of rainfall in the individual monsoon months has become erratic and unpredictable by even the most sophisticated climate models.

For instance, while the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecasted that the country would receive 93 per cent of normal rainfall for 2009 South-West monsoon, the country actually received a deficit rainfall of just 77 per cent, with the sowing month of June receiving a mere 53 per cent of normal rainfall.

Dramatic changes in climate, especially the rainfall pattern, have left farmers across the country struggling with uninformed and risky sowing and harvesting decisions — which in turn have adversely affected considerable economic value creation.

Given that the country's agriculture is largely a gamble with monsoons, there is an urgent need for India to build a more robust and scientific agro-meteorological infrastructure that provides every Indian farmer with access to climatic information.

According to the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), provision of timely and accurate agro-meteorology advisory services to farmers could increase net returns by as much as 10 to 83 per cent for various crops.

Such an infrastructure would not only facilitate farmers to take well-informed farm decisions but would also form the backbone for efficient implementation of weather-based insurance products.

Status of Agro-meteorology

In the mid 70's, the IMD — in collaboration with various state governments and agricultural universities — initiated the Agro-meteorological Advisory Services (AAS) focused on addressing the needs of Indian agriculture. District level advisory services were started in 2008. While IMD provides district agro-meteorological information and advisory on a five-day interval, the services provided are grossly insufficient to meet the mounting challenge of climate change. Some of the key bottlenecks of the current system include:

At a policy level, the focus on development of agro-meteorological services lacks the intensity and drive that is required to handle the massive challenge that climate change is posing to Indian agriculture.

With just about 130 Agro-meteorological Field Units (AMFUs) the agro-meteorological infrastructure in the country is extremely under-developed and needs extensive scale-up.

At the information dissemination level, while provision of district level AAS information is commendable, this needs to be at more micro-level (such as the mandal level) so as to make the information more precise and useful to the farmer. Further, AAS information published electronically by IMD rarely reaches the farmer due to limited access to internet.

Research and development in agro-climatology is found wanting in applied research and farmer interaction.

Private sector participation in institutional capacity building is extremely low.

Recommendations and Way Forward

Though policy makers have initiated action to address the impact of climate change on agriculture, a lot more focus needs to be brought in to address the challenges of ‘climate risk' to Indian agriculture. The first step in this direction would be to develop a comprehensive policy and action plan that assesses various scenarios of the possible impact of climate change on agriculture. Some of the other key interventions that require specific attention include:

Building Specialised and Dedicated Institutional Capacity for Agro-meteorology: There is an urgent need to build a dedicated national institution that is focused on developing infrastructure and information on climate risks to agriculture. Information thus generated needs to be efficiently used as adaptive responses to climate change by the farming community and all other actors involved in agriculture.

Building a robust, scientific and intensive agro-meteorological infrastructure network: This network will have the capability to capture weather information up to the mandal or taluk level.

Promote ICT participation for transfer of information to the farmer: While IMD has invited proposals from public and private institutions in media, telecom & IT sectors to take up the task of distributing agro-meteorology advisory to farmers, there is a need to bring in economically viable yet farmer-friendly public-private partnership models to efficiently disseminate climate information to the farmer.

Promote private participation in Agro-meteorology: While there are several private players who are offering niche weather-based services in the sector such as NCMSL (National Collateral Management Services Limited), WRMS (Weather Risk Management Services) and Skymet, lack of scale and economic viability is restricting entry of private players into the sector.

The Government needs to develop collaborative partnership models and provide incentives for entry of private players into this sector during the initial phases.

Support transfer of world class technology into India: There are many global technologies linking agro-meteorology to scientific yield management of crops. For instance, a Dutch firm provides an automated weather station (linked via satellite) in the farm which monitors water usage by plants, evaporation, humidity, wind, rainfall, temperature, etc. to judge the crop condition and give timely advice to the farm owner on decisions related to activities such as sowing, irrigation, fertilizer application, pest control and harvesting time. The company claims that farmers achieve up to 30per cent more crop output while reducing input usage. While use of such technologies in India is limited at individual farmer level, it could be introduced at a community or a village level through proper governmental support.

Develop a focused and integrated R&D program for agro-climatology: There is a need for a pan-India detailed study of the crops and climate on a region-wise basis and efficient dissemination of this information to the farmer.

While many institutions such as IMD, NCMRWF, IITM (Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology), the State Agricultural Universities, ICAR (Indian Council of Agriculture Research) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are engaged in research on agro-meteorology and weather forecasting, their efforts are rarely co-ordinated towards a common goal. There is a need to build strong cross-institutional interaction and develop coordinated research programmes amongst these institutions so as to leverage the combined strengths and offer robust weather forecast for crops.

To sum up, climate risk to India's agricultural economy is an imminent danger and its impact is expected to worsen rapidly in the near future. At a policy level, there is an urgent need to develop a focused and robust plan for adaptation of Indian agriculture to this impending climate challenge. This would require a significant increase in institutional capacity so as to provide the best possible support to the farmer in order to strengthen his adaptive capacity to the vagaries of climate change and get onto a pathway of climate-resilient development of Indian agriculture.

Source: www.thehindubusinessline.com