Background

India’s farm economy is increasingly at the mercy of heat, erratic monsoons, floods, and storms, which translate directly into damaged fields and lost income. In the first nine months of 2023, there were extreme weather events on 235 of 273 days damaging approximately 1.84 million hectares of cropped area. In 2024, the damage one year later had risen to 3.2 million hectares, revealing an urgent worsening trend. In addition to acute disasters, chronic land degradation is also reversing the resource base of agriculture: India had 97.84 million hectares of degraded or desertified land in 2018-19 which is a form of land degradation which reduces soil fertility, water retention, and long term agricultural productivity. 

Implementing climate-smart and resource-efficient practices can increase farm resilience to shocks while improving incomes. A 2024 economy-wide analysis found that the System of Rice/Wheat Intensification (SRI/SWI) approach produced the highest output and GDP multiplier among approaches investigated while reducing water and greenhouse-gas footprints relative to conventional practices. The same analysis found that diversifying from rice, wheat, into maize, sorghum, or millets will further reduce water and carbon intensity and incur minor tradeoffs in income—the implications taken into consideration in light of India’s nutrition and dryland priorities. As climate-smart practices can be advanced alongside micro-irrigation and improved moisture management approaches (e.g., through mulching or retaining crop residues), zero-/minimal-till cropping, integrated nutrient and pest management, agroforestry, and weather-based advisories, the adoption of INRM practices can: (1) stabilise yields with increased variability in heat and rainfall patterns, (2) lower costs and emissions in input, labour and production systems; and (3) restore an improved soil and hydration quality processes at the local land and water cycle levels. In regions with recurrent floods or droughts, landscape-level measures (such as farm ponds, percolation structures, and vegetative buffers) that reduce runoff and allow aquifers to recharge can enhance existing farm-level practices. Simply put, sustainable agriculture in India is not a lifestyle choice, it is a risk-management strategy for protecting rural livelihoods today while preserving the ecological variables of production for the rest of the tomorrow.

Project “Ahana Organic” has been a leading initiative which has been tirelessly working to address the needs of both the planet and the marginalized farmers who can gain empowerment through organic farming practices.