India Need Climate-resilient Agriculture (CRA)

Syllabus: GS3/Agriculture

Context

• India is fast-tracking the expansion of Climate-Resilient Agriculture (CRA) to counter growing climate-change risks to food security, rainfed agriculture, and farmers’ incomes.

What is Climate-resilient Agriculture (CRA)?

• Climate-resilient agriculture uses a range of biotechnology and complementary technologies to guide farming practices and reduce dependence on chemical inputs, while maintaining or improving productivity. 
• Tools include: Biofertilizers and biopesticides, and soil-microbiome analyses.
  • Genome-edited crops can be developed to withstand drought, heat, salinity, or pest pressures. 
  • AI-driven analytics can integrate multiple environmental and agronomic variables to generate locally tailored farming strategies. 

Why does India need CRA?

• Agricultural Economy: India is an agricultural nation with a rapidly growing population, which places increasing pressure on the need for higher and more reliable farm productivity.
  • Around 51% of India’s net sown area is rainfed, and this land produces nearly 40% of the country’s food, making it especially vulnerable to climate variability. 
• Conventional Farming Methods are not enough: These methods alone may not withstand the rising stresses of climate change.
  • Recent modelling suggests that by the end of the century, yields of staple crops like rice could fall by 3-22%, and in worst-case scenarios by more than 30%. 
• Enhanced Productivity: Climate-resilient agriculture offers a suite of technologies that can enhance productivity while protecting environmental health.
  • It can also reduce India’s reliance on food imports and strengthen the country’s strategic autonomy in the food sector.

Challenges

• Low Adoption: CRA techniques adoption is low among small and marginal farmers due to limited access, awareness, and affordability, and quality inconsistencies in biofertilizers and biopesticides that undermine trust in biological alternatives. 
• Uneven Distribution: The rollout of climate-resilient seeds remains slow, with the adoption of new tools such as gene editing still emerging and uneven distribution across States. 
• The digital divide limits the reach of precision agriculture and AI-based decision tools. 
• These challenges are compounded by ongoing soil degradation, water scarcity, and accelerating climate volatility, which may outpace current adaptation efforts. 
• Fragmented policy coordination further risks slowing progress. 

Government Initiatives 

• National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture: In 2011, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) launched a flagship network project ‘National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture’. 
• The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture has been formulated to enhance agricultural productivity, especially in rainfed areas, focusing on integrated farming, water use efficiency, soil health management, and synergising resource conservation.
• The BioE3 policy also positioned CRA as a key thematic area for the development of biotechnology-led solutions. 
• Leading companies such as Biostadt, IFFCO, GSFC, NFL, and IPL Biologicals supply bio-inputs that improve soil health and reduce chemical dependence. 
• India also has an expanding digital agriculture sector, with agritech startups offering AI-enabled advisories, precision irrigation, crop-health monitoring, and yield prediction tools.

Way Forward

• There is a need to accelerate the development and deployment of climate-tolerant and genome-edited crops, strengthening quality standards and supply chains for biofertilizers and biopesticides, and provision of digital tools and climate advisories to support adoption by small landholders. 
• Financial incentives, climate insurance, and credit access are essential to support farmers during the transition. 
• India needs a coherent national CRA roadmap under the BioE3 framework, aligning biotechnology, climate adaptation, and policies to deliver resilience at scale.

Source: TH