India needs Rs 1,08,000 crore for food security

Indian agriculture needs Rs 1,08,000 crore to fight climate change in the next five years to ensure food for all at a reasonable price by 2020.

Updated on: Mar 14, 2011, 24:14:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Indian agriculture needs Rs 1,08,000 crore to fight climate change in the next five years to ensure food for all at a reasonable price by 2020.

To prevent food catastrophe, the agriculture ministry has asked the funds for implementing National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture under the Prime Minister's National Action Plan on Climate Change.

Over 60% of the money will be spent on developing new technologies, crop varieties and new practices to fight climate change.

"There is a new way to promote use of wheat and rice varieties that consume 30-40% less water than traditional varieties. Farmers also need to be educated about early harvesting technologies to check impact of rising temperature," a senior scientist with the Indian Council for Agriculture Research said.

Climate change poses biggest risk to country's food security as Pune-based Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology has already shown that global warming was causing erratic monsoon behaviour.

At present, India produces 200 million tonnes of foodgrain, which is enough to meet its domestic demand.

But climate change has adversely impact India's chances of feeding all its people and successfully implementing the National Food Security law.

Climate change experts say India will not be able to meet the annual increase in demand of 5 to 6% as climate change will either cause the production to stagnate or fall.

Another major financial component is for creating agriculture infrastructure around the country to cater to emerging needs of farmers including network of cold storages and storing capacity to meet emergency situations.

About 6% of the funds to be allocated under the mission will be utilised for research and development of new climate resilient crop varieties, officials said.

The Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change is expected to take a final call on the financial allocation shortly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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