The G-20 members have stressed on the need to boost climate finance to support farmers who make an effort to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change on the farm sector, agriculture secretary Manoj Ahuja said on Wednesday.
After the G20 first agriculture deputies meeting held at Indore, he said the elegates also suggested that farmers can be financially incentivised if they adopt climate-friendly farming or green agriculture. “One way of financially rewarding farmers is through giving carbon credit”, he said.
The carbon farming programme in the country has been initiated by a private entity Grow Indigo, a joint venture between seed major Mahyco and US-based Indigo.Farmers who adopt farming techniques – direct seeded rice, which improves water use efficiency and no tillage practice which conserves soil organic biomass, prior to planting of paddy could register for the programme for getting carbon credit.
The G20 meeting also discussed the impact of climate change on agriculture and its productivity. “We discussed how we can help save agriculture and make it sustainable,” Ahuja said. India shared the measures taken towards ‘climate smart agriculture’ like mapping the vulnerable areas and conducting research in the meet.
On the issue of food security and nutrition, agriculture secretary Ahuja said, there was a discussion on achieving one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of ‘zero hunger’ by 2030.
“It has been seen that food insecurity has increased after 2018. This is a cause of concern. We discussed what best we can do to reduce hunger,” he said
On the area of strengthening the value chain in agriculture, G20 delegates discussed improving the ‘farm to folk’ value chain in agriculture. India also shared about the Agristack project that will help issuing farm advisories specific to the region and help adoption of precision farming.
For creating Agristack, the agriculture ministry is in the process of finalising ‘India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA) which will lay down a framework for Agristack.
Around 100 delegates, including representatives of international organisations including Food and Agriculture Organisation, International Fund for Agricultural Development and International Food Policy Research Institute attended the meet.
The three-day event which concluded on Wednesday deliberated on four key priority areas – food security and nutrition, sustainable agriculture with climate smart approach, inclusive agriculture value chain and food supply system and digitisation of agriculture transformation.
The next meetings of the G20 agriculture working group will be held in Chandigarh, Varanasi and Hyderabad.