Real time contingency planning: initial experiences from AICRPDA
Agriculture is the source of livelihood for nearly two-thirds of the population in India. A major part of the agriculture is rainfed (~80 out of 142 million ha net cultivated area) and will remain so for at least for a foreseeable future. The impact of climate change and variability in the country on agricultural production is quite evident in the recent years. The weather aberrations like drought and floods extreme events like high intense excess rainfall, frost, hail storm, heat wave, cold wave etc are recurrent in most parts of the country in the crop growing seasons. The South-West monsoon accounts for nearly 75% of the natural precipitation received in the country and exerts a strong influence on the kharif food grain production and the economy in terms of agricultural output, farmers' income and price stability. The onset of South-West monsoon, the amount of rainfall and its distribution are crucial factors which influence the performance of agriculture. The probability of erratic monsoon rains is about 40% which implies that in 4 out of 10 years there would be an adverse impact on the crop production. There is a need to develop appropriate strategies to deal with such eventualities. Many contingency plans are available at various scales . However, any contingency intervention either technology related (land, water, soil, crop) or institutional and policy based, which is implemented on real time basis in any crop growing season, which is considered as Real time Contingency Plan, is the need of the hour to stabilize crop stands, production and income in rainfed regions.