This year, the theme for the study was the impact of climate change on the lives and livelihoods of farmers—who own/operate/lease in less than one hectare of land. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare describes this category of farmers as ‘marginal’. But then, as per the last All India Report on Agriculture Census 2015-2016, over 65.4 per cent farmers in our country are marginal. The farmers who own land between one to two hectares are called small farmers. Together, these two categories constitute 89.4 per cent of all farm families, and their numbers are growing. However, we have to juxtapose this with the counter-intuitive proposition that the number of beneficiaries under PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi has come down from a peak of 10.47 crore in 2022 to 9.26 crore in the latest round.
While farmers had heard of Climate Resistant Agriculture (CRA), the ability to cope with this depends largely on the extension services and technical inputs, and herein lies the real challenge. It is true that many of them have been compelled to change the sowing time and method, but this has been by default rather than design. Input suppliers at the village level continue to be the main source of their information on seeds, nutrients, insecticides, and pesticides. With regard to custom hiring centres, warehouses and cold stores, the extent of coverage and use leaves much to be desired.
Then we have the third component of markets (Bazar), in which some notable initiatives have been launched to promote climate-smart agriculture. These include ITC’s climate-smart villages, micro-insurer IBISA’s partnership with NGO Dhan Foundation, Tata Trusts’ Collectives for Integrated Livelihoods Initiative that reaches out to thousands of farmers with its digital weather index-based insurance, and EM3 Agri Services, a custom-based hiring company that has created a pan-India network of farm service centres.