Driving the Right Food System in India – Will Play a major role in greenhouse gas reduction

Getting our data right and meaningful will drive the food system transition in India to sustainable food systems. If we read any report and research on Indian Agriculture, we have the nos in place in terms of the amount of fertilizer consumed, water consumed per crop, subsidy or money spent towards agriculture. But the outcome impact of an unsustainable crop production system is often neglected. As per various data, agriculture is responsible for?around?15% to 20% of India’s GHG emissions. Of this, ~70% is due to methane produced from livestock – largely cows and buffalo – and?rice cultivation. The remaining 30% comes from nitrous oxide emitted from?fertilisers.?

So the challenge is how we reduce this agriculture emission. The solution for us is to work on preparing a crop based, region based, practice based GHG emissions and integrate the outcome to our cropping decision and consumption. For instance each kg of Rice to cultivate produces around 5.45 kg of co2, wheat has a ghg impact of 0.45 but millets will be lower than wheat. So the decision lies in how do we produce the right crop and change the consumption pattern. A supreme court appointed committee – came out with a very interesting no – The value of a tree is 74500 rupees. That is a tree monetary worth is its age multiplied by Rs. 74500. So when one state wanted to cut 356 trees – it was valued at a cost of Rs. 220 crores. We need to focus on bringing something like this in agriculture – what’s the cost of an unsustainable production system. Putting a no (Value in terms of rupees) will definitely drive policy change faster – both production, consumption and how we manage subsidy. The Second important point is how to make the subsidy model right – getting the right subsidy model in place. Subsides is a form of financial support for increasing output while keeping the prices low for consumers. – I think this fundamental thinking about subsidy should change in Indian context. Actually subsides without a lens on natural resource damage the agro ecology in a long term.?