Farming, even in the best of times, is besieged with challenges. Fear, uncertainty, and anxiety are emotions that farmers grapple with season after season. However, the burden of feeding a hungry world has never been heavier than it is today.
Climate change has intensified life’s difficulties for farmers. Extreme weather events such as heat stress, droughts, floods, and unpredictable weather patterns like unseasonal rainfall and temperatures are increasingly disrupting agriculture. Simultaneously, resources like water are also under greater stress.
We are witnessing the combined impact of these factors on yields and farm incomes. India, for instance, is poised for its first drop in rice output in eight years due to an erratic monsoon. The area under wheat cultivation is also set to decrease as a lack of moisture in the soil compels farmers to switch to alternative crops. This situation has prompted the government to curb or ban exports of wheat, sugar, rice, and onions, raising concerns that India may have to import some crops.
In short, growing food today is more challenging than ever, ironically at a time when farmers are being called upon to produce more food than ever before. Therefore, now farmers need to adopt climate-smart practices to not only reduce the sector’s impact on the environment but also to ensure that the growing global population remains fed by making farming smart, sustainable, and, most crucially, resilient.
Collaborative approach: Climate-smart practices encompass aspects like product usage, spraying techniques, tilling practices, and harvesting methods. For them to be most effective, a collaborative approach involving farmers, the government, and the private sector is needed. While the government’s role will be to create an enabling policy environment, the private sector will lead the way in devising innovative solutions.
This innovation will manifest on several fronts. Some companies will engage in mechanisation, others in enabling the digitisation of agriculture, and still others in developing a portfolio of products that will lay the groundwork for farmers to transition to climate-smart agricultural practices.
Take, for instance, UPL, the company, whose India division is now officially called UPL Sustainable Agro Solutions, falls into the latter category. UPL has developed a vast range of climate-smart products covering everything from crop protection and soil health to plant stimulation and post-harvest solutions.
Recently, UPL has been ranked as the industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, achieving a score of 76, outperforming the industry average of 24. In the past, the company has also been ranked #1 by Sustainalytics among its peers. This achievement demonstrates UPL’s continued commitment to sustainability and harnessing the decarbonisation potential of the agricultural industry.
One of the company’s biggest success stories has been its Zeba technology. Zeba is a naturally derived, starch-based, super-absorbent tech. Intended for in-furrow application, Zeba increases the water-holding capacity of the soil, improves nutrient use efficiency in the crop’s root zone, and has a positive effect on the soil microbiome, thereby maintaining soil health. It can absorb 400 times its own weight in water and release it as per the crop’s need. It is effective for six months in the soil and is completely biodegradable, decomposing naturally and harmlessly into the soil.
UPL has developed a vast range of climate-smart products covering everything from crop protection and soil health to plant stimulation and post-harvest solutions
Zeba was used across 200,000 acres of farmland in 2021 by 135,000 farmers across India and saved 58 billion litres of water in just one year. Moreover, the use of Zeba led to a 25 per cent reduction in fertiliser use, while delivering savings of Rs1,500 per acre on electricity and Rs1,000 per acre on labour. In total, Zeba has earned the average farmer an additional income of Rs22,000+ per hectare on an additional spend of less than Rs5,000.
The company’s ProNutiva programme has scripted a similar success story. ProNutiva integrates natural bio-solutions (bio-protection, bio-stimulants and bio-nutrition) with conventional crop protection products improving crop health, resilience, while also boosting yields. The package helped farmers in Gujarat increase the yields of their groundnut crops by over a third. Replicated on a larger scale, the package has the potential to slash India’s dependence on edible oil imports, one of the few areas in which we haven’t yet achieved self-sufficiency.
Beyond its products, UPL also provides integrated agricultural services giving farmers access to IPL kits, soil testing, weather, crop advisory, and mechanisation services, empowering them to practice sustainable precision farming. At the same time, the company has also enabled access to finance for farmers, which is key to the deployment of climate-smart practices.
By pushing the boundaries of innovation, UPL is helping farmers produce more food, more sustainably, with less. That is the sort of visionary leadership that’s needed to put agriculture on a sustainable footing. Our farmlands are desperately in need of another green revolution. To make farming sustainable – that is the only solution.