Assured MSP for small grains and integration in PDS will shield farm sector from vagaries of climate change : Shishir Priyadarshi and Omkar Dhanke
BUDGET EXPECTATION
Climate change is reshaping every aspect of our lives, and its toll on agriculture serves as a wake-up call for India to act. The Budget 2025-26 must pivot decisively towards climate adaptation and mitigation, focusing on climate-resilient agricultural practices. This is necessary to ensure the long-term viability of India’s agrarian economy and rural livelihoods.
The agricultural sector, providing livelihood support to 46 per cent of the population yet contributing only 18.2 per cent to GDP, faces challenges such as low productivity, fragmented land holdings, water scarcity, higher input costs, and post-harvest losses. Climate change aggravates these issues by affecting water availability, increasing heat stress, pest load, and soil degradation.
The sector’s dependency on monsoons is also critical, with nearly 60 per cent of the net sown area relying on rainfed conditions. Over the past five years, central and southern India have seen above-normal rainfall, while other regions experienced rainfall deficits. This variability influences and impacts crop selection, cropping patterns, and water and soil management.
India’s agricultural land – the backbone of the food system is struck harder by these challenges. It faces dual challenges – quantitative reduction and qualitative degradation. Marginal farms dominate the landscape (68.45 per cent under one hectare), and rapid urbanisation is reducing arable land. In 2021, per capita availability of arable land was just 0.12 hectares (World Bank). These challenges hinder farmers’ ability to mechanise production or adopt technological innovations given the higher marginal costs of input as compared to marginal benefit.
Climate change further complicates this with fluctuating crop yields and diminishing returns. Therefore, it is imperative to build climate resilience in agriculture as well as boost land productivity. The Indian Centre for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has developed 100 drought- and heat-tolerant crop seed varieties. However, their large-scale adoption remains limited.
For instance, while 75 per cent of wheat cultivation uses climate-resilient seeds, paddy coverage is under 20 per cent. The upcoming budget must focus on making these seeds affordable and accessible, with the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) providing on-field demonstrations and support to facilitate the transition from conventional seeds.
Additionally, the crop diversification strategy must supplement climate-resilient seeds to reduce the risks associated with monoculture and address climate vulnerabilities. Food grain constitute 60 per cent of India’s agricultural production, but shifting from staples like wheat and rice to pulses, oilseeds, and millets will not only enhance nutritional security but also reduce dependency on water and fertilisers.
Despite policy calls for this shift, efforts have been limited. For example, pulse production faces challenges such as concentrated production, limited procurement under MSP, and low prices. Consequently, India relies on imports for 15 per cent of its annual pulse consumption. To achieve self-sufficiency in pulses by 2027, measures, like assured MSP procurement, price deficiency payments, and expanding cultivation in rice-fallow regions, should be included in the Budget 2025-26.
Similarly, millet cultivation has declined since the Green Revolution. Millets are drought-tolerant, require less water, and thrive in poor soils – showing higher climate resilience. Recognising their potential, the Government declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets, but incentivising farmers to take up the production remains key. Millet production should be more remunerative than rice and wheat to make this shift possible. Therefore, to generate the demand for millets, the upcoming budget should make provisions for assured MSP procurement, integrating millets into the public distribution system, and including them in meals under schemes like Poshan Abhiyaan and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
The digitalisation boom in India holds immense potential for transforming agriculture. The Government has already introduced initiatives like the Fund for Innovation and Technology to speed up crop damage assessment and claim settlements and the Namo Drone Didi scheme to help women SHGs rent drones for applying fertilisers and pesticides. Continuing these efforts, the Budget should focus on precision farming, AI-based agro-advisory services in local languages, and enhancing the Kisan Pehchaan Patra scheme by creating a unified database of farmers for targeted service delivery.
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Shishir Priyadarshi, a former IAS officer, is the President of Chintan Research Fondation (CSF), and Omkar Dhanke is Research Assistant at CRF
