19 August 2011
No. 1480
(Left to right) Mr JK Tandon, CEO, Corporate Sustainability, Jindal Steel Works (JSW); DG William Dar; and Dr AK Singh, DDG, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) at the Roundtable on Climate Change and Rainfed Farming Systems.
Roundtable meet discusses climateresilient rainfed agriculture Climate change is indeed around the corner. In Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh, the area has turned ‘arid’ from ‘semi-arid’ over the last thirty years. Within a season, crops can be grown only within 10-15 days. Another case is Parbhani in Maharashtra, where due to extreme temperatures, sorghum may not grow in the postrainy season in 10-15 years.
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roviding sustainable and science-based solutions and pro-poor approaches to climate change adaptation was the focus of the Roundtable on Climate Change and Rainfed Faming Systems held at ICRISAT-Patancheru on 16 August. In this event, discussions focused on how to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies to manage risk and protect the livelihoods of small and marginal farmers who live in rainfed regions. Inaugurating the roundtable, Director General William Dar said, “Much more than crop yield and
quality, climate change will have far-reaching consequences for agriculture that will disproportionately affect poor and marginalized groups who depend on the sector for their livelihoods and have a lower capacity to adapt.” Dr Dar also emphasized that “climate-related crop failures, fishery collapses and livestock deaths already cause economic losses and undermine food security, and these are likely to become more severe as global warming continues.” He cited a recent study which estimates that the annual costs of to page 2 ...4