Climate related natural disasters are predicted to threaten crop productivity and thereby food security in the future in India where the damage would be severe with more than 50 percent people being directly dependent on agriculture and with about 43 percent of cultivated lands being rainfed.
The semi-arid regions of India are the most rain dependent making them more vulnerable to severe drought impacts. Droughts make rural communities, especially small holder farmers more vulnerable to poverty and deprivation when the monsoon fails. The contribution and importance of smallholder farming to food production is significant in India where limited land, technological progress, dependence on rain-fed agriculture makes them more vulnerable to climate shocks.
<p><em>Technology and policy interventions are key factors responsible for determining how the farmers under scarce land and labour can cope with the uncertainties of changing climate informs this paper titled '<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/water/articles/10.3389/frwa.2024.1327651/full">Enhancing farm income resilience through climate smart agriculture in drought-prone regions of India</a>' published in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/water">Frontiers in Water</a>. </em></p> <p><em>The <a href="https://atari-hyderabad.icar.gov.in/atarihyderabad/nicra?lang=en">National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA)</a>, a programme of <a href="https://icar.org.in/">Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) </a>aims at building resilience of Indian agriculture to climate change. It comprises of components such as strategic research, technology demonstration, sponsored and competitive research grants and capacity building. </em></p>
The Government of India (GOI) has several programmes launched to mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change. The National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC) was launched in 2008 with 8 major missions and the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) and the projects under it work in synergy with the NICRA program of the ICAR. This project is one of India’s most comprehensive programme which has a great potential in achieving climate resilience especially in times of extreme events like droughts.
This study looks into the impacts of the interventions of the project on the livelihoods of the farm households in the climate resilient villages (CRV) adopted under the project in Kalaburagi district of Karnataka.. The study looks at the impact of droughts on farm incomes and analyses the effect of climate resilient technology adoption on farm household incomes.
The study finds that:
The sample households had an average of 4–5 members with most of them involved in agriculture as their main occupation. About 50 percent of the farmers were involved in livestock rearing, and were able to invest on average Rs. 28,000/acre/year in agriculture. The farm households were well connected to market with good transportation facilities.
The farmers were able to grow at least two crops during the kharif in both the villages. The major crop in both the villages was rice, followed by cotton and red gram. Farmers in villages that had undergone climate resilient interventions were able to grow rabi crops that included chilli, mulberry, maize, and vegetables. Thus, climate resilient interventions in the treated village enabled them to go for more crops during the rabi.
<p><em>The cropping intensity of the village that had not undergone interventions was 127.07 percent while the treated village had a cropping intensity of 134 percent and farmers were growing high value crops like mulberry and vegetables which led to better incomes.</em></p>
The average land holding of the farmers was 3.86 ha while the villages that had undergone intervention had higher farm size compared to the villages that had not undergone intervention as they had an average of 1.87 ha of leased-in land.
<p><em>In the village that had undergone intervention, agricultural activities earned the farmer about 82 percent of their total income. It included 74 percent of share coming from crops and 8 percent share of livestock activities. The farmers in the village that had undergone intervention went for high value crops and vegetable cultivation and the income from crops had the major share. The villagers did not feel the need to diversify their income to other non and off farm sources of income.</em></p>
In the village not exposed to intervention, agriculture contributed to only about 55 percent of the income. The off-farm and non-farm income contributed around 43 percent to total income from activities like tailoring, small shops, plumbing and electrical works. The village that had undergone intervention could thus earn a higher share of their income from agriculture through adopting climate smart practices, receiving timely and proper agro-advisories and risk management options.
<p><em>Farmers in the villages that had undergone intervention had better employment opportunities in agriculture compared to the non treated villages. On an average, a farmer in treated village spent 100 man days more than the non treated village as they were able to grow 2–3 crops in a year as well as vegetables in summer.</em></p>
Farm ponds were constructed and one community farm pond and one check dam was also was constructed, and the desilting of the drainage channels was also taken up in the villages that had undergone intervention, which resulted in increase of water storage potential of the villages.
The harvested water from farm ponds helped farmers increase cropping intensity and thereby improved their incomes. The highest increase in productivity was observed for maize crop (50 percent), followed by banana (8 percent), sunflower (7.14 percent), cotton (4.6 percent), redgram (4.34 percent) and jowar (1.33 percent).
<p><em>The net returns from different crops cultivated was higher in the villages that had undergone interventions, and farmers on an average earned about Rs. 15,000 per crop. The difference in the average farm incomes before and after the interventions was Rs. 84,770/FHH/year.</em></p>
<p><em>The small farmers benefitted the most from the interventions followed by the medium and large farmers. Small farmers had about 80 percentage increase, while the income of medium and larger farmers increased by about 40 percent.</em></p>
An average farmer in the village that had undergone intervention had more than 90 percent higher income from agriculture both in normal as well as in drought year. And the reduction in the income from agriculture during drought was among farmers in the villages that had not undergone intervention.
Thus climate smart interventions in the form of technologies, trainings, agro-advisories etc., increased the profitability of farming through higher yields and enhanced incomes and smallholder farmers benefited the most. Farm size, adoption of climate resilient technologies, livestock possession, family size and investment in agriculture were found to be the significant contributors to farm incomes.
<p><em>The study demonstrated that mainstreaming climate adaptation practices/strategies through livelihood programs, rural employment generation schemes can greatly help in building the resilience of farm households against climate extremes such as droughts.</em></p>