Food and Nutrition

Decentralised and communitarian efforts in soil and water conservation, sustainable agriculture, afforestation and renewable energy need extensive investment, if the human race is to survive the deepening water, food, energy and climate crises.

New Delhi, July 1 (India Science Wire): Increasing temperatures, changing monsoon and more frequent extreme climate events are posing a threat to food security in India.

The water sector remains male dominated at different scales, from engineers and technocrats responsible for designing irrigation systems, to upper caste and upper class men who decide on the location of canals, borewells, tanks, and other water systems at the grassroots level.

Managing natural resources, the sustainable way

India’s leading weather and agriculture risk monitoring company has released a Kharif Report, sharing the prediction for the upcoming monsoon and its impact on the production of kharif crops.

In recent years, cycles of extreme drought and severe flooding have affected the country’s water availability and crop production. The trend can be attributed to climate change. Scientists have been exploring drought and flood tolerant crop varieties to offset stress conditions that significantly constrain rice production.

India's food system produces large environmental impacts but these vary by diets. The per capita environmental impacts of diets in India are currently lower than those of many high-income countries due, in part, to habitually low consumption of animal source foods.

Tamil Nadu is one of the most water-vulnerable states in India that depends heavily on groundwater for irrigation. As high as 56 percent of land in the state is currently irrigated by groundwater and the remaining by tanks and canals.

Droughts are one of the most feared natural calamities impacting agriculture and food production as well as the morale of millions of farmers in India. Recent studies show that the frequency of droughts is increasing.

India has the highest national freshwater demand globally and 91 percent of our freshwater is used in the agriculture sector. Cereals account for over 50 percent of the dietary water footprint in India and represent a potential opportunity for reducing water use in Indian agriculture.