Decarbonising Indian agriculture Editorial FinancialExpress
Decarbonising Indian agriculture Editorial FinancialExpress
Emissions from agriculture and livestock are high:
- As per India’s third Biennial Update Report , in 2016, agriculture and livestock emitted 407,821 Gg of CO2e. This amounts to around 14% of total emissions.
- GHG emissions are typically discussed in terms of mass of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e).
- Gg of CO2e measures emissions in Giga grams (Gg) of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.
- GHG emissions are typically discussed in terms of mass of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e).
- Out of the total agriculture and livestock emissions of India in 2016, 61.3% is linked to livestock.
- Apart from livestock, the major constituents of agriculture GHG emissions are rice cultivation (17.5%), fertiliser application (19.1%), and field burning of agricultural residues (2.2%).
Decarbonising Indian agriculture will help meet climate goals:
- Considering the huge contribution of agriculture and livestock to emissions, decarbonizing this sector will help India meet its climate goals.
- Further, transition to sustainable and climate-smart agriculture and land use can create many jobs and enhance incomes apart from mitigating GHG emissions and environment pollution.
Pathways for decarbonisation:
- Deep decarbonising pathways would include:
- Reducing biogenic methane from cattle and rice cultivation
- Inculcating resource efficiency by reducing consumption of water, chemical fertilisers, and energy
- Reducing waste in the food supply chain
- Building climate resilience through deploying automation and technology
- Reducing biogenic methane from cattle and rice cultivation
Decarbonisation of agriculture must be done carefully to be sustainable:
- India, with 1.75 million sq km arable land and a 300 million cattle population, has 160 million rural households with agriculture (most of them small and marginal farmers) being the main source of livelihood.
- Hence, decarbonisation has to be carefully calibrated to be sustainable and avoid an adverse impact to over 120 million marginal farmers who are still in the ‘survival phase’ of their socio-economic development.
Factors critical for both decarbonisation and sustainability:
- Maintaining healthy soil:
- Fertile soil enhances farm yields and incomes apart from being a carbon sink.
- Healthy soil holds more moisture and soil conservation methods reduce erosion.
- Soil can be enriched with compost/bio-char from co-products of biogas/biofuels plants. This will also help mitigate environment pollution, and displace chemical fertilisers.
- Fertile soil enhances farm yields and incomes apart from being a carbon sink.
- Water conservation:
- Agriculture consumes over 80% of freshwater in India, making conservation critical.
- Micro-irrigation with automation and adoption of low water-intensive varieties and farming practices is essential.
- Areas under water intensive crops must be reduced through crop diversification.
- Agriculture consumes over 80% of freshwater in India, making conservation critical.
- Alternate cropping:
- Alternate cropping contributes to GHG mitigation and is an emerging area in climate-smart farming.
- For example, seaweed cultivation as additive to cattle feed reduces biogenic methane emissions, improves feed quality, and enhances milk production.
- Alternate cropping contributes to GHG mitigation and is an emerging area in climate-smart farming.
- Agro-forestry:
- Trees act as windbreaks, reduce soil erosion, enrich soil, and filter water.
- Studies suggest that 5% increase at 5 yearly intervals to the existing tree and forest cover can help mitigate India’s projected emissions.
- Trees act as windbreaks, reduce soil erosion, enrich soil, and filter water.
- Bio-energy from farm waste:
- Generating bio-energy from farm waste offers immense potential for mitigating emissions as well as growth in non-farm economic activity.
- Manure-based community biogas plants can support clean cooking and distributed power.
- India also has huge potential in Bio-CNG production.
- Generating bio-energy from farm waste offers immense potential for mitigating emissions as well as growth in non-farm economic activity.
Way ahead:
- Sustainable agriculture pathways will require significant capital.
- A large portion of this could come from appropriate re-allotment of existing subsidies.
- Climate finance and long-term capital will be needed for areas having longer gestation period, viz biogenic methane mitigation, agro-forestry, etc.
- A large portion of this could come from appropriate re-allotment of existing subsidies.
- Further, India’s many sustainability initiatives in agriculture need coordinated and action-oriented implementation and appropriate institutional architecture for convergence from the Centre to states to districts or agro-zones.
Importance:
GS Paper III: Environment
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