Sugarcane will likely take a leadership role in terms of implementing smart agriculture over the next few years. On the other hand, maize, which consumers less water, is considered a future crop to meet the ethanol industry demand and in turn help in combating climate change, said speakers at a panel discussion on the challenges posed by climate change at the businessline Agri and Commodity Summit 2024 on Friday.

Tarun Sawhney, vice-chairman and Managing Director, Triveni Engineering and Industries Ltd, said the impact of El Nino has been hard felt in Karnataka, where yields and area have fallen by 35-40 per cent, while it was about 20 per cent in Maharasthra. However, there has been no negative impact in Uttar Pradesh, which has the benefit of canal irrigation.

Sawhney said the lessons coming out of the ethanol system have been important for India as it has saved more than ₹24,300 crore in foreign exchange. He further said that it was important to have a sustainable policy framework besides educating sugarcane farmers on what’s required and for investments and commitments by the industry by not just partnering with farmers but also for expanding the existing infrastructure.

Stating that bio-energy is a sunrise sector, Sawhney said “it is small but important part of combating climate change. The second and third generation ethanol generated from the biomass holds a lot of potential”.

“We need to create technology that will create more jobs. Within the field of agriculture, bio energy will create twice as many jobs as far as any other form of energy sector such as solar etc.” he said.

“We will see the start of investment in 3G ethanol with several of the large corporates making announcement in this segment,” Sawhney said. “I see India of tomorrow embracing biochemicals, bio-plastics at cost points that are unimaginable to the world today. There’s lot of research happening” he added.

Due to the corporate nature of agri product like sugar, large corporates are interacting with 50 million farmers. “You have the ability to look at regenerative farming, foster the environment to reduce nitrogen fertiliser, and to support organic fertilisers. That’s a very important step in the right direction,” he said adding that sugarcane may take a leadership role in terms of implementing the smart agriculture over the next few years.

S K Pradhan, Assistant Director-General (FFC), ICAR, said the change in climatic patterns is affecting the farmers resulting in lower agriculture output. Farmers in rainfed areas are the worst affected and more than 60 per cent of the farmers practice rain farming. Besides, the changing climate has also impacted the livestock sector as drought has impacted the quality of fodder and output, besides land degradation.

Though India has achieved food security in foodgrain production and horticulture output exceeding 330 million tonnes, it is predicted that output of crops such as rice, wheat and maize may decline by 2050 due to the impact of climate change. “We have to think of other resilient crops to cope with the future demand” Pradhan said. Maize can help meet the demand for ethanol sector, without hurting the interests of the poultry sector, he said.

B Dayakar Rao, Director, Nutrihub, ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research, Hyderabad, said in the context of climate change it was very important to consider alternative crops such as millets. “There is a great scope to bring back the millets and potential to target them as climate resilient crops,” Rao said. Studies have proven that millets can sustain in extreme weather conditions and have shown that they can fare better than many other crops, Rao said adding that they are also good sources of fodder.

B K Singh, Director, BKC Aggregators Pvt Ltd and ex-founder of Skymet, said offering plot-specific advisory services to farmers, depending on the stage of the crops, can help tackle climate change. Ground-level data is very crucial for offering crop advisory. However, ground-level data availability is scarce and Skymet has set up some 8,000 weather stations to improve the crop advisory and has been working with other agencies to improve the forecast, he said.

The summit was sponsored by State Bank of India and co-powered by NABARD in association with National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd (NCDEX) and INDOFIL Industries Ltd. Dhanuka Agritech Ltd and Kribhco Agri Business are associate partners. The National Stock Exchange and Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Co­ operative Management were the regional sponsors of the Summit.

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