The Government must increase awareness about the environment-friendly aspects of dryland farming, among the farmers, and its potential to combat climate change. Dryland farming has the ability to rehabilitate degraded land
Dryland farming is charecterised by scarcity of water, and relies entirely on natural rainfall. Moreover, it does not include the usage of conventional methods, and techniques of irrigation. This makes dryland farming a very challenging proposition.
Drylands cover up to 41.3 per cent of the earth’s land surface, and are complex, evolving structures whose characteristics and dynamic properties depend on many interrelated links between climate, soil and vegetation.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) classifies drylands as tropical and temperate areas with an aridity index of less than 0.65. With nearly 72 per cent of world’s drylands existing in developing countries, the livelihoods, food security, and wellbeing of nearly two billion people, in these countries depend highly on nurturing, and developing dryland biodiversity. Dryland biodiversity is of central importance, as it is instrumental in ensuring sustainable development along with providing significant global economic values, through the provision of ecosystem services, and biodiversity products.
Ideal dryland agriculture practices that confirm to the best in the world, can elicit maximum output in the form of farm produce with minimum inputs. Dryland farming essentially needs an efficient system of cultivation, which is able to conserve maximum amount of moisture in the soil, in a natural mode so as to assist in optimum production of food grains in a sustained manner.
Successful implementation of dryland farming methods can have effective environmental benefits by slowing down climate change, through carbon sequestration, and species conservation. According to a report by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), drylands play a crucial role in buffering the negative impacts of climate change, land degradation, and drought, besides proving to be a compelling solution for ensuring global food security.
The total land area of India is 329 million hectares, of which 144 million hectares are arable land, of this 94 million hectares falling under 128 districts have been recognised as dryland farming areas.
Inspite of nearly 70 per cent of the cultivated area being under dryland farming, yet it accounts only for 42 per cent of the food grains produced. These conditions not only show the apathy of the authorities towards improving the productivity of dryland agriculture, but also demonstrates the low priority accorded to dryland farming research by agricultural scientists.
With nearly 75 per cent of the farmers engaged in dryland agriculture being small, and marginal, it is crucial for the Government to improve dryland-farming efficiency, and thereby raise the economic status of farmers, thus helping in poverty alleviation. Dryland farming also holds immense significance especially in the context of fluctuating food grain production, and expanding population in our country.
The Government must increase the awareness amongst the farmer community of the environment friendly aspects of dryland farming, and its potential to combat climate change, besides the ability to rehabilitate degraded lands. A robust dryland farming policy, and equally effective implementation can not only improve food security , but also help in improving the nutrition levels. The policy can also help the farmers to have better access to drylands, with suitable technologies to increase the productivity. This in turn can lead to improvement in income levels of households, and communities.
Despite their importance, and potential to effectively address food security, drylands are under threat across the world as they are being degraded through a complex combination of climatic pressures such as decreasing rainfall, and evaporation of water, and human stresses, such as unsustainable farming techniques, mining, and overgrazing.
Additionally, increasing problems of water scarcity, coupled with erosion of topsoil, is resulting in an alarming consequence of desertification, that is expanding with serious human, and environmental consequences.
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), desertification and degradation could be costing developing countries up to eight per cent of their gross domestic product a year. The UNCCD also stresses that the costs are not in economic terms alone, but encompass social, and well-being for instance, desertification of drylands also leads to migration, with some 50 million people estimated as being displaced within the next 10 years.
Investing in drylands can pay environmental dividends. A comprehensive strategy, and effective policy can help in recognising the value of dryland agriculture, and will enable better planning, and realisation of the full economic potential of dryland ecosystems. This will help in rebutting the common perception that drylands are ‘economic wastelands’.
(The writer is an environmental journalist)