With India Leading, G20 Gets Down to Brass Tacks on Climate Resilient Agriculture

HYDERABAD: Climate change has emerged as a serious challenge to sustainable agriculture that can ensure food grains production to meet the needs of the people and India is playing its part in tackling this global test, Union minister of state for agriculture and farmers welfare Shobha Karandlaje said on Monday.

 Addressing the media at the start of the three-day G20 technical workshop on climate resilient agriculture that began in the city, the minister said that climate change had already set in: There were drought-like conditions in some parts of the country and heavy rains in others. “What we are seeing is a result of climate change. Under such circumstances, planning for climate resilient agriculture is vital for global food security and the G20 nations are seized of the matter,” she said.

“It is for the first time that under India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, the G20 nations have been holding a series of technical workshops aimed at discussing existing and future solutions to challenges facing the G20 group, with the rest of the nations too facing similar challenges,” Karandlaje said.

G20 members from 16 countries plus two representatives from guest nations are taking part in the deliberations along with representatives from various agriculture research institutions.

Dr Himanshu Pathak, Director General of Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR), said ICAR institutions had so far developed 1,888 climate resilient varieties of different crops. These varieties were developed to withstand drought conditions, heavry rains and floods, salinity, and improved  heat and cold weather tolerances.

“A single community cannot ensure a sustainable solution, and India is ready to help all countries on climate resilient agriculture. India is ready to learn and exchange knowledge with other countries and these include technologies that include gene editing, precision agriculture, use of artificial intelligence and robotics to address problems of climate change affecting agriculture,” he said.

Answering a question on agriculture being a state subject in India, Karandlaje said that the experience so far has been that “some states step back and are not completely with the Government of India on issues relating to agriculture. We want to overcome such hurdles, after all, farmers do not have political considerations.”

Pathak added that every state in India now has a state action plan for climate change and through its network of hundreds of laboratories, the ICAR provides and shares know how on this, and other agriculture related issues to all states.

Pathak, on the rising use of millets, said, “These are very very climate resilient grown typically as they are in marginal lands. India is the country where most millets are grown.” Karandlaje said some states, including Karnataka, have already included millets in their public distribution system and the country was looking at a bigger global market for Indian millets.