Sustainable livelihood is a top priority for the nation today. Over half the country’s working population is employed in agriculture and a sustained as well as steady growth in rural incomes is critical for a positive ripple impact on the manufacturing and services economies of the nation.

The clarion call made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to double farm incomes is a firm, objective and targeted step in this direction.

In this context, the Food, Energy, Water (FEW) framework is extremely topical, given the current state of affairs of deployment of factors of farm production, viz water, agri inputs, soil and energy.

There are numerous dimensions to leveraging the best of diversification, risk management, technology, clean energy and corporate supply chain initiatives in the context of the FEW nexus, for substantially improving farm incomes.

Diversified Cropping

Nearly two-thirds of the total agriculture production today is high value (dairy, horticulture, fish, meat, poultry, spices).

In the process, farmers have been nudged to shift to less water-intensive crops, reduce dependence on rain, and ensure that their livelihoods are more sustainable.

However, this diversification has been largely driven by a few States only, like Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

Diversification needs to be more geographically widespread and augmented through further thrust on processing of perishables.

Government support in identifying commodity-specific clusters, developing infrastructure and encouraging entrepreneurship, shall go a long way in ensuring diversification-led sustainable livelihoods.

Risk management

Since long, inefficient subsidies on the input and output sides of the value chain had been curtailing growth, ineffectively reaching beneficiaries and promoting unsustainable farm practices, thus dis-incentivising diversification and adding to the twin deficits challenge.

Recent prudent policy interventions by the Centre on Direct Benefits Transfer, rationalisation of subsidies, and solutions to curb fertiliser misuse, are some steps initiated over the last two years that are slowly making an efficient risk management framework for farmers, a key enabler of sustainable farming.

Further, the entire paradigm of risk management – through warehouse receipt financing, crop and weather insurance, and market-driven efficient price discovery – needs to be brought into the mainstream as an alternative to the current policy of price support, skewed mainly towards food grains.

Farmers need to expand their horizons to a wider dimension of value addition, and collaborative researches in technology are required to produce processable grades of commodities. Specific clusters need to be identified to produce such grades at a large scale. Innovative use of ICT across the value chain is key to an efficient farm risk mitigation mechanism.

Impetus needs to be given to technologies promoting climate smart agriculture, farm yield improvement, lower utilisation of resources, climate-resilient crops, better soil management and efficient farm-level water management.

Clean energy

Driven by policy and regulatory initiatives of the Centre for the first time ever, the long desired ethanol blend percentage of five per cent in fuel on an all-India basis is likely to be reached this year.

The substituted 135 crore litres of petrol will save the country close to $1 billion forex annually. Ethanol produced domestically from sugarcane reduces environmental pollution, improves engine-life, increases fuel efficiency and also improves returns for cane farmers and the domestic industry.

Further, there is a need to make irrigation climate-smart. Electricity and diesel usage in groundwater irrigation produces about 26 MMT of carbon emissions — about 5 per cent of India’s total.

Solarising the groundwater economy could eliminate this huge carbon-footprint, reducing the carbon-intensity of the country’s economic growth and address the farm power subsidies debate.

Initiatives by farmers’ groups in pooling resources for solar energy supply to the grid too, need to be promoted. These steps shall go a long way in reconfiguring our power economy, groundwater economy and agrarian livelihoods.

Corporate help

Companies with an enlightened self-interest in adhering to the triple bottom line have totally transformed the way practices across the supply chain operate.

There are numerous instances of global multinationals and Indian corporates that have built tenets of sustainability through collaboration with farmers, through deployment of appropriate water management, energy usage, agri inputs application and soil management.

A sustainable agriculture revolution leveraging the best of the tenets of the FEW nexus for improving farm incomes is a necessity, not a choice. Let us embrace this in the larger interest of building a vibrant farm economy.

The writer is Senior President (Food & Agribusiness Strategic Advisory and Research) of YES Bank, and Distinguished Fellow of YES Institute

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