Winning the monsoon gamble in India

William D. Dar, Director-General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, writes in the Hindu (India): …Science-based strategies being developed by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and its partners could greatly help vulnerable farming communities cope with drought, global warming and other associated effects of climate change.

... The unholy nexus of poverty, drought and land degradation in the dry lands can be broken by adopting a four-pronged science-based strategy developed by ICRISAT and its partners for drought mitigation.

First is growing drought tolerant and climate change ready crops to match the available length of the growing season and low soil moisture… Second is contingent action to replace affected crops with those that are more drought tolerant…. Third is the efficient management of natural resources, arresting land degradation, conserving soil moisture and harvesting water in the rainy season for supplemental irrigation…. Fourth is empowering stakeholders through capacity building, enabling rural institutions and formulating policies supportive of dry land agriculture. …

…With climate change, water scarcity is likely to be exacerbated and countries need to efficiently manage available water resources. Along with the following, policies and programmes supportive of dry land agriculture need to be immediately formulated and implemented. Among these are:

…The dry lands have been bypassed by the Green Revolution, but significant investments in improved water management and technological innovations including rural infrastructure, along with appropriate policy and institutional innovations, can have a significant impact in increasing agricultural productivity….

Monsoon in Manipur, India, shot by Mongyamba, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License