Grain of Resilience

 AS THE GLOBAL population races towards 9.7 billion by 2050, the pressure to meet rising food demand is expected to intensify. Histori­cally, increased food production has come at the cost of unsustainable land and resource use, aggravating food and nutrition insecurity, especially under the escalating climate stress. This dynamic cre­ates a vicious cycle wherein anthropogenic factors induce adverse climate change, which reduces crop yields, prompting intensified farming; this, in turn, increases greenhouse gas emissions.

India, home to over 1.4 billion people, 46 per cent of whom are engaged in agri­culture, stands at the heart of this challenge as the sector not only feeds the nation but also plays a pivotal role in supporting liveli­hoods and contributing to the national out­put. It also accounts for about 14 per cent of India’s total GHG emissions, mainly driven by practices such as rice cultivation, live­stock rearing, and biomass burning. There­fore, the Indian agrifood system should take proactive steps to strike a balance be­tween high agricultural production and low greenhouse gas emissions.

Nonetheless, the deeper concern lies in a more subtle but telling trend reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In the last three decades, India’s emissions per capita from agrifood sys­tems have remained relatively stable at an average of 0.92 tonnes. This may sug­gest progress towards ecological sustain­ability or at least containment of adverse environmental impacts. However, in reality, the constancy masks a troubling truth. As the population in India as well as the world increased in this period, total consumption also increased, effectively leading to a rise in overall greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the constancy of per capita emissions, juxtaposed with population growth and rising consumption, instead reveals that not enough progress has been made in adopting cleaner and more sustainable farming methods.

Looking ahead, this trend in population and consumption growth is likely to continue. India’s total food consumption is ex­pected to grow by 1.1 per cent annually, reaching 20.6 million ter­ra calories by 2033, as its population is expected to surpasses Chi­na. While yield improvements will support production growth, the real opportunity lies in sustainable intensification by way of adopting climate-resilient practices that reduce emissions and enhance productivity. This underscores the urgent need for targeted climate fi­nance to support a just transition, even for the smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of Indian agriculture and are highly sensitive to income variability. The recent memorandum of understand­ing between FAO and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development to advance climate-resilient agriculture through innovative finance and carbon markets indicates progress, but India’s journey towards a green agrifood system is just beginning.

Globally, agrifood systems contrib­ute to one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions but receive only 4 per cent of climate finance, with only a fifth of this going to smallholders. As per the latest data on disbursement of climate finance, despite agriculture’s central role in cli­mate mitigation and adaptation, $95 billion was directed towards agrifood systems in 2022. This was significantly lower than allocations to other climate-sensitive sectors, such as transport and energy systems.

Nonetheless, recently, the climate fi­nance disbursement to agrifood systems nearly tripled, showing increased global commitment. As most of the funds were allocated for climate mitigation, this suggests a stronger focus on reducing emissions from agrifood systems instead of just adapting to climate change.

While awareness about the significance of climate change mitigation in agrifood systems is increasing globally, it is at a comparatively nascent stage in India.

Despite the importance of sustainable agriculture as an effec­tive means to achieve the end goal of climate change adaptation and mitigation, it continues to face funding challenges in India. The annual financial flows to sustainable agriculture in India saw a modest dip of 1.32 per cent, dropping from $303 billion in FY2020-21 to $299 billion in FY2021-22. The overall reduc­tion was driven by a decrease in public-sector contributions, as private-sector investments in agrifood systems continued to grow during the same period.

At a time when strategic, long-term investments are needed to transform agriculture into a low-emission, climate-adaptive sector, a decline in the flow of climate finance by the public sec­tor can decelerate the adoption of sustainable practices such as crop diversification, regenerative farming, and climate-smart technologies. Therefore, strategically planning and allocating climate finance towards agrifood systems is not just a fiscal ne­cessity for India, but a strategic imperative for its climate and development goals.

INDIAN AGRICULTURE CAN rely on a range of innovative climate-finance instruments to catalyse agricultural transfor­mation. For instance, carbon funds can incentivise ecosystem services such as soil carbon sequestration, and green bonds can finance sustainable infrastructureto support the agrifood sys­tem. Additionally, farmers and public-private institutions can have contract farming arrangements based on blended finance models. This can promote crop diversification and assured pro­curement under a risk-sharing mechanism that can ultimately reduce farmer vulnerability. Eventually, the agrifood system could transform into not only a productive but also an environ­mentally resilient and economically inclusive system.

However, scaling these solutions has its own set of challenges. One of the most pressing challenges is the limited awareness and technical capacity at the farm level, especially among the small­holder farmers. This knowledge gap restricts their ability to use and benefit from the emerging climate financial instruments, despite their availability. Building awareness and capacity is thus a prerequisite to any meaningful climate finance strategy. Closely tied to this is the issue of low farmer participation, which is largely driven by income vulnerability and risk aversion. For farmers facing financial stress, the adoption of climate-resilient practices is unconventional and thus risky, especially when the benefits are long-term or uncertain. Without strong incentives and institutional backing, farmers are unlikely to adopt sustain­able practices. Climate finance can bridge this gap by enabling and supporting such investments. Even if farmers adopt climate-positive practices, the complexity of verification and monetisa­tion models for climate finance instruments presents a significant barrier. For instance, measuring, reporting, and verifying (MRV) carbon sequestration or emission reductions at the farm level re­quires sophisticated infrastructure and technical expertise, which are currently lacking in most rural areas. Moreover, monetising these verified outcomes by converting them into tradeable car­bon credits demands robust market mechanisms and regulatory clarity, which are still evolving in Indian agriculture. Such chal­lenges underscore the need for a comprehensive and inclusive approach to climate finance in agrifood system of India, such that it prioritises capacity building, simplifies financial instruments, and encourages active participation by the farmers to transition to climate-resilient agrifood systems.

Given the diversity of agroecological zones and socio-eco­nomic conditions across India, firstly, context-specific pilot projects must be initiated to test scaleable models of climate finance. States such as Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya, and Odisha, where green budgeting frameworks have already been intro­duced, offer fertile ground for such experimentation. These pilots should be designed to incorporate farmers’ perspectives through household surveys, community consultations, and participatory policymaking, ensuring that interventions are locally relevant and socially inclusive. Secondly, local institutions and coopera­tives can organise targeted awareness campaigns in person and via digital platforms to demystify climate-finance instruments and foster greater engagement among smallholder farmers. Institutional innovations such as blended finance models and risk-sharing mechanisms (assured procurement and contract farming) must also be tailored to India’s agrarian realities. They can incentivise sustainable practices, especially in regions vulner­able to climate shocks such as Punjab, Haryana, and Maharash­tra. Furthermore, to overcome the technical barriers associated with MRV, advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, remote sensing, and satellite imagery can be leveraged to build robust, cost-effective systems for tracking climate-positive prac­tices. This can enhance transparency and accountability and build stakeholders’ trust in climate finance mechanisms.

Ultimately, the success of climate finance in India’s agrifood systems will depend on its ability to integrate financial innova­tion with social inclusion, technological advancement, and eco­logical sustainability, creating a resilient agricultural economy that is both climate-smart and farmer-centric.