Agriculture sustains the world and nourishes its people. To meet the increasing food requirements of a steadily growing global population, agricultural outputs need to increase correspondingly but also sustainably. Meanwhile, the adverse effects of climate change are becoming increasingly evident across the globe in the form of extreme weather events and natural disasters such as cyclones, floods and heat waves, which are displacing people, disrupting livelihoods and causing heavy losses of life, property, and crops.
Recent studies suggest that the impact of climate change on agricultural produce could be severe in many parts of the world in the coming years. Given these challenges, almost all nations are relooking at their agricultural practices to make them more sustainable and resilient.
Addressing challenges to pave the way for sustainable agriculture: Adverse global events – whether they are caused by the actions of humans or the forces of nature – tend to affect farmers, especially the smallholders, worse than others. Ongoing efforts aimed at protecting and improving their livelihoods, therefore, need to be not only sustainable but also inclusive. Much better progress in achieving these goals can be made through collaboration with multiple stakeholders jointly addressing the same issues.
This is becoming evident through different programs and initiatives that are being implemented across the world, especially in developing countries. In many such countries, the challenges faced by farming are rooted in economic and socio-cultural norms that need to be addressed, if positive changes are to be achieved. Some of these challenges include small land holdings, gender inequality; lack of knowledge; low technology adoption; and inadequate market linkages, among others.
A multi-pronged approach to make agriculture sustainable: The ‘sustainable development goals’ (SDGs) laid down by the UN cover many such aspects and more. They also focus, among other things, on increasing food security, alleviating poverty, promoting gender equality, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices.
A multipronged approach is needed to achieve these closely interlinked goals – make farming more productive and profitable for smallholder farmers; increase the participation of women in agriculture; make farming attractive to future generations and make the latest agri-innovations and farming knowledge accessible to all farmers. Many programmes are already underway in this direction and they need to be strengthened and expanded further.
Empowering smallholder farmers to enhance rural incomes sustainably: The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has highlighted the importance of food security for nations. The war has disrupted the food supply chain across the world, pushing food prices up and forcing millions towards hunger. Even without disruption in the food supply chain, low- and middle-income countries are grappling with the challenge of feeding a large section of their population, struggling with poverty.
To meet this challenge, an inter-play of high-yield crops with effective crop protection tools combined with technological innovations, sustainable agricultural practices and an effective farm-to-fork strategy, is required. When we know that almost 80 per cent of the world’s food needs are met by smallholder farmers, it’s clear that solutions targeted at them will not only be instrumental in reducing hunger but also in increasing their incomes, helping meet another SDG goal of alleviating poverty. My experience has shown that, when benefits are tangible, acceptance of solutions is rapid and exponential.
A good example is the Better Life Farming
alliance, which Bayer started in India in collaboration with multiple stakeholders and is now being replicated in low to middle-income countries across the world. The Better Life Farming (BLF) alliance works with partners across the agri-value chain to support smallholder farmers in developing economies to increase crop yields and farm incomes.
The BLF alliance has global partners that include Bayer with its expertise in seeds, crop protection and agronomy; IFC, the development finance institution for impact assessment; and Netafim for drip irrigation technologies. In India, the BLF alliance works with additional local partners across the crop value chain. The Better Life Farming initiative has led to a doubling of crop yields and a tripling of farm incomes among participant farmers and is already impacting the lives of over 400,000 farmers in India and Bangladesh.
The other big issue that needs to be addressed is gender equity in rural communities. Women account for nearly half of the world’s smallholder farmers. Yet, the agrarian systems are skewed in favour of males -- and women don’t get a level playing field in terms of access to resources, extension services and Agri-inputs. T
his creates challenges for female smallholder farmers in accessing agri-inputs, training and farming advisory services. Better Life Farming’s gender-smart approach involves on-boarding female agronomists for extension services and female agri-entrepreneurs to extend its reach to thousands of other female farmers. Owing to the large female representation, the programme has succeeded in securing greater participation of women and also helped smallholder farmers not only improve their livelihoods but also elevate the overall standard of living for their families.
Promoting sustainable agriculture that reduces the use of limited natural resources: Farmers in India and other low-income countries are also coping with depleting natural resources. To give an example, in India, excessive usage of groundwater for rice cultivation has become an endemic problem in many North Indian states.
Farmers need to adopt methods and crops that conserve water. This means reviewing traditional agriculture practices and adopting a holistic crop management system along with a drive for more hybridisation. For example, producing a kilo of rice requires the consumption of around 5,000 litres of water.
Adoption of techniques like direct-seeded rice, alternate wetting, drip irrigation and conservative tillage can bring down this consumption by up to 30 per cent. These methods, along with the usage of hybrid seeds, also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farming. A ‘rice sustainability initiative’, started by Bayer, using these techniques is giving good results.
Collaboration between the government and the private sector to enhance the collectivisation of farmers: Another initiative that is making farming sustainable in countries like India, is the collectivization of smallholder farmers to help them take advantage of economies of scale. Food aggregation, food processing, better logistics infrastructure and retail demand aggregation at the local level can be achieved through the creation of farmer collectives, like a Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO).
In India, the government-backed Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium is encouraging public-private partnerships in FPOs by inviting private companies to establish and promote FPOs across several states. This is a positive development because FPOs can leverage economies of scale in production and marketing and are effective in building socio-economic resilience among farmers.
Similarly, ‘food value chain’ partnerships between farmers and private players can help minimize the wastage of products and provide farmers with direct access to markets and end users, resulting in substantially higher incomes. The partnerships can help farmers with handling, grading, storage, processing, packaging, transportation, and marketing activities until the product reaches the consumer.
Producing a kilo of rice requires around 5,000 litres of water. Adoption of techniques like direct-seeded rice, alternate wetting, drip irrigation and conservative tillage can bring down this consumption by up to 30 per cent
Leveraging technology to improve outcomes for farmers: To make farming more sustainable, it is necessary to provide farmers with targeted technology solutions, agronomy advice, better tools, techniques, and crop inputs. Today, these challenges are being addressed using a combination of an efficient seed pipeline, genomics, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), drones, weather predictors, and automation.
Drones can be used for precision spraying of crop protection chemicals and also monitor crop progress to help implement timely and targeted interventions during the crop cycle. With digital technologies and AI tools, every new generation of seeds and crop protection solutions is becoming smarter, more effective, and more sustainable than its predecessors.
The proliferation of smartphones and mobile data, together with the rapid rise of e-commerce and digital platforms, are creating better market linkages and enabling farmers to get higher value for their produce, helping double their incomes and lift them out of poverty.
Sustainable agriculture ties in with the ESG goals of organisations: Agriculture is directly and closely linked with multiple socioeconomic and developmental aspects, which in turn, are increasingly being linked with the sustainability and ESG goals of industries, businesses, and countries around the world. Programmes and initiatives that help in making agriculture more beneficial for its stakeholders and the environment are, therefore, assuming greater importance than ever.
The interventions focus on a wide range of actions including preserving biodiversity; preventing deforestation; enabling judicious use of land and water and natural resources; upholding human rights; improving transparency, and many more.
In the years ahead, we will see more and more collaboration between private players, governments, and farmers to create a wide-scale positive impact on the world and its people through agriculture. Sustainability is everyone’s collective responsibility and will yield the best result, when multiple stakeholders are aligned to this shared goal.