Such a scenario makes India, an agrarian country, susceptible to considerable environmental impacts due to climate change. As per India’s Third Biennial Update Report 2021 [2], submitted by the Government of India to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Indian agriculture sector contributed 14% of the total GHG emissions in 2016. In India, the maximum agricultural GHG is emitted at the primary production stage and directly generated through the production and use of agricultural inputs, soil disturbance, and residue management to increase crop yield and harvests.

In this regard, Indian agricultural policies or initiatives often act as a panacea to mitigate climate change-related disasters. In this article, we will discuss one of the most important agricultural policies, the minimum support price policy, and its relationship with climate change.

Minimum Support Price

Minimum support price is a ‘minimum price’ for any crop that the government considers as remunerative for farmers and, hence, deserves ‘support’. It is the price/rate that the government has to pay to procure a particular crop.

Although this policy was started by the Government of India in 1966-67 to help farmers incentivise in growing a selected variety of crops, it has resulted in land degradation, excessive pressure on crops and land, etc. The Commission for Agricultural Crops and Prices¹ (CACP) issues minimum support price for 23 crops pan-India, out of which 5 crops, i.e., rice, wheat, coconut, sugarcane, and pulses, emit the highest percentage of GHG emissions.

The following are the impact of minimum support price on climate change:

1. Overemphasis on attaining self-sufficiency and a surplus in food grains, which are water-intensive like paddy, and environmentally unsustainable.

2. Overcultivation of rice has led to overuse of fertilisers in the states of Punjab and Haryana, which in turn has led to groundwater depletion, and soil and water degradation resulting in environmental loss. In a study, it was reported that rice cultivation in northwest India resulted in a reduction of the water table by 33 cm per year during 2002-08.

3. Minimum support price and procurement policies have been concentrated in a few states and largely on two crops, that is rice and wheat, leading to their overproduction. As on 1 January 2022, the stocks of wheat and rice in the country’s central pool were four times higher than the buffer stock requirement [3].

4. The nitrate ions released from the excessive use of urea for wheat and maize cultivation have caused water contamination.

5. Monocropping of wheat and rice has hampered the indigenous agrobiodiversity of the geographical area.

6. According to a report published by the National Institutes of Health, rice and livestock products emit the highest percentage of total dietary GHG emissions (refer to Figure 2).

Figure 2: Distribution of GHG emissions from agricultural production in the Indian diet
Source: Details available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167880916306065,
last accessed on 17 January 2023

Recommendations

India has a plethora of indigenous climate-resilient strategies that need to be acknowledged and promoted to avoid environmental crises. For effective implementation of agricultural policies, PPP (public-private partnership) model could be used and climate experts, policymakers, local communities, etc. engaged in climate change-related policies.

For the states suffering from minimum support price-related environmental crisis, heavy investments in soil reclamation should be done. Another important step is a precise and planned fertiliser strategy, especially for Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh farmers. Moreover, crops other than wheat and rice should be scaled up to a national level following strong institutional reforms that cater to the rice and wheat production system.

Even after so many years post the implementation of minimum support price, there is still a lot of ambiguity related to it. Thus open digital access to real-time mapping and tracking of agricultural policies and their database are required.

The following are the suggestions for less emission-intensive rice and wheat production:

• To adopt less water-intensive irrigation practices, the use of organic fertilisers and moisture conservation technologies like the Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) method could be promoted. To avoid floods, DSR could be used as a great alternative instead of open flood treatment. The difficulties in DSR could be tackled by using bio-weedicides and bioherbicides.

• Till now, India has been exporting its water. This means that when exporting rice, water used for its cultivation is also exported. For 1 kg of rice, 5 litre of water is required for irrigation. This virtual water, as criticised by various researchers and academicians, should not be disregarded as it burdens the limited available water resources used for paddy cultivation.

• The government should incentivise alternative options of crop diversification and reduced carbon emissions to cater to the phasing out of intensive rice production as it is both an economic concern and a political concern.

• Minimum support price can act as an incentive price for many of the crops, which are desirable for nutritional security such as coarse cereals, and also for pulses and edible oils for which India is dependent on imports.

Press Information Bureau. 2022. Press Information Bureau. Details available at https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1868579, last accessed on 8 December 2022.

Endnote

¹Read more at https://cacp.dacnet.nic.in/