Millions of farmers don’t have safeguards against climate change impact

The impact of climate change on India’s agriculture is more evident than ever before, but millions of small and marginal farmers do not have adequate safeguards, said a study released on Friday.

Updated on: Nov 27, 2015, 10:32:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The impact of climate change on India’s agriculture is more evident than ever before, but millions of small and marginal farmers do not have adequate safeguards, said a study released on Friday.

A farmer works in his field in Noida. (Burhaan Kinu /HT Photo)

The country’s farm sector is considered highly vulnerable to shifts in weather patterns as half of the cropland is dependent on rainfall, drawing around 60% of the farmers to the core of the climate-proofing debate.

Climate change increases frequency of extreme weather events, a fact apparent in rainfall data of the past 100 years. Government statistics show such events have increased in recent years, causing massive damage to crops.

The report, “Lived Anomaly”, by the Delhi-based advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said the area affected by freak weather events in 2015 jumped to 18.33 million hectares from 0.35 million hectares in 2013, resulting in crop loss worth Rs 20,453 crore. The findings come three days ahead of a climate conference in Paris where 196 countries will decide a new pact providing a mechanism to tackle global warming between 2020 and 2030.

The report underscores the inability of the Indian system to cope with climate change weather events on farmland and points out that compensation is given for a maximum of two hectares of land, is less than 50% of the actual damage on that plot and comes several months after the actual loss.

“The quantum of compensation decided is most of the times a political decision rather than a scientific one,” the study says, adding that the loss is measured by local revenue officers on the basis of oral evidence and often without visiting all the affected areas.

The study comes on the heels of unseasonable rains and hailstorms destroying crops in parts of northern, eastern and central India this year.

Crop insurance, touted as a solution to provide respite to farmers hit by weather anomalies, is almost a non-starter. The CSE said just 20% of farmers are covered under the Centre’s crop insurance schemes that basically provide a safety net for farm loan dues in case of crop damage.

Climate change implications for Indian agriculture

*Kharif crops to be hit more by rainfall variability, rabi crops by dropping temperatures

*Wheat faces damage in rabi due to terminal heat stress

*Negative impact on rice, wheat and horticulture

*Neutral or positive impact on some crops like soybean, groundnut, potato in few parts

*Milk yield in livestock to be hit by heat waves

*Significant negative impact on commercial poultry due to heat stress

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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