Climate change a major challenge to India's agriculture

ANI (India): The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, on Saturday said that climate change has emerged as a major challenge to India's agriculture. Addressing the 83rd foundation day of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) here, Dr. Singh said: "The immediate problems that our farmers face relate to intra-seasonal variability of rainfall, extreme events and unseasonal rains.

These aberrations cause heavy losses to our crops every year. There is therefore an urgent necessity for us to speed up our efforts to evolve climate-resilient crop varieties, cropping patterns and management practices."

He further said he is happy that the ICAR is implementing a major scheme, the National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture and has set up the state-of-the-art National Institute on Abiotic Stress Management.

"The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, which is one of the eight Missions under our National Action Plan on Climate Change also seeks to devise appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies for ensuring food security, enhancing livelihood opportunities and contributing to economic stability at the national level," a PIB release quoted Dr. Singh, as saying....