A climate-resilient rainfed agriculture
By Kritika A Gadpayle and Indu K Murthy
India has been witnessing variable monsoon for the past few years. The last year was marked by surplus rain in June, deficit rain in July, and surplus rain in August and September, as reported by the Ministry of Earth Sciences. This inconsistency in the monsoon rainfall pattern is an indication that extreme weather events might become the norm, rather than the exception, in the coming years.
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To address this grave concern of yield losses due to climate change, the government has announced its plan to re-evaluate crop-planting across the country to align agricultural practices with the changing climate. This requires a comprehensive assessment of climate risks to different crops at the district or block level, as there is variability in climate parameters—rainfall intensity, temperature, frequency and intensity of extreme events, etc., even within a state.
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The study also illustrates that there is no single dominant climate risk for all the districts in the state or the crops. For instance, the projected high temperature during the growth period of groundnut (a rain-fed crop) and heavy rainfall during the weeks coinciding with the reproductive phase in Kolar, Koppal, and Yadgir could reduce yield by 10–40 per cent.
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The government of Karnataka could consider implementing crop insurance with a “no claims” process (piloted in Kenya) that, unlike traditional crop insurance, clears claims based on deviations in weather — which are then compared to indexed past weather data and correlated with production losses.
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