Real Time Contingency Planning Initial Experiences from AICRPDA

Not AvailableAgriculture is the source of livelihood for nearly two-thirds of the population in India. A major part of the agriculture is rainfed (~80 out of 142 million ha net cultivated area) and will remain so for at least for a foreseeable future. The impact of climate change and variability in the country on agricultural production is quite evident in the recent years. The weather aberrations like drought and floods extreme events like high intense excess rainfall, frost, hail storm, heat wave, cold wave etc are recurrent in most parts of the country in the crop growing seasons. The South-West monsoon accounts for nearly 75% of the natural precipitation received in the country and exerts a strong influence on the kharif food grain production and the economy in terms of agricultural output, farmers' income and price stability. The onset of South-West monsoon, the amount of rainfall and its distribution are crucial factors which influence the performance of agriculture. The probability of erratic monsoon rains is about 40% which implies that in 4 out of 10 years there would be an adverse impact on the crop production. There is a need to develop appropriate strategies to deal with such eventualities. Many contingency plans are available at various scales . However, any contingency intervention either technology related (land, water, soil, crop) or institutional and policy based, which is implemented on real time basis in any crop growing season, which is considered as Real time Contingency Plan, is the need of the hour to stabilize crop stands, production and income in rainfed regions. For the last four decades, across All Incdia Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture (AICRPDA) network centres, efforts are being made to develop doable rainfed technologies for drought proofing in major rainfed production systems across diverse rainfed agroecologies. Since 2010-11, under National Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), the thrust area has been on the demonstration of land, crop, soil and water management practices as contingency measures on real time basis during weather aberrations like delayed onset of monsoon, early, midseason and terminal droughts and extreme weather events like excess rainfall, hailstorm etc. The real time contingency interventions were implemented under both on-station and on-farm in 36 NICRA adopted villages by AICRPDA centres in 26 districts in 15 states. The real time contingency interventions included cops, varieties, rainwater conservation and efficient utilization along with various crop management practices. The first priority was to have a reasonable crop stand in the field and then manage it for getting better crop yield and income which otherwise would have been a total loss to the farmers. In this bulletin, the initial experiences of AICRPDA on the real time contingency interventions implemented in diverse rainfed agroecologies are highlighted. Further, the initial preparedness, role of village institutions, and strategies/options for implementation of real time contingency plans are discussed. We sincerely acknowledge Chief Scientists, Scientists and other staff at AICRPDA centres for their efforts in implementation and popularization of real time contingency interventions in a participatory mode in the NICRA villages. Further, we are highly grateful to all the stakeholders, particularly the practicing farmers, Village level Climate Risk Management Committees, Custom Hiring Management Committees for farm implements, farmers/farmer groups managing the seed banks in the NICRA villages, who have been a part of successful implementation of the real time contingency plans. We sincerely hope that in future, the implementation of real time contingency measures would likely to give stability to agricultural production and income in rainfed regions with appropriate institutional and policy back up.Not Availabl