A Shift To Less Water-intensive Crops May Be The Key To Protecting Farmer Lives (The Wire)
22 January 2025, New Delhi: The Wire (India) interviewed Avinash Kishore, Senior Research Fellow based in IFPRI’s South Asia Office in New Delhi, for an article discussing the impact of government subsidies on water-intensive crop production in India, emphasizing the depletion of groundwater resources.
Researchers commenting on the topic highlight how subsidies, particularly minimum support price (MSP) and guaranteed procurement, have incentivized overproduction of crops like rice and wheat in water-scarce regions such as Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, leading to significant groundwater depletion.
Kishore comments that MSP is not inherently problematic but requires strategic reform. He explains, “The problem is rice being procured from Punjab, Haryana, and even Telangana – states that are water-scarce. These are not the regions where rice should be grown.” Shifting procurement to water-rich states like Odisha and Chhattisgarh, believes Kishore, would reduce reliance on water-stressed areas.
Kishore also highlights the need to rethink subsidies: “Farmers still don’t trust these experiments yet, but something needs to be done.” He refers to pilot programs in Pondicherry and Gujarat where farmers receive payments based on land size and electricity needs, discouraging overuse of electricity for irrigation.
To address groundwater depletion and promote sustainability, Kishore proposes crop diversification and says, “there should be incentives for cultivating higher value agriculture practices like livestock, fruits and vegetables, fisheries and horticulture”. He adds that, while current cropping patterns dominated by rice and wheat, “if you look at the GDP, milk is more profitable than rice and wheat, and maybe even pulses combined in terms of value.”
Achieving this shift, however, requires investment in crop research, financial support systems, and policies that reduce climate and production risks. Kishore concludes, “These things require investment and new imagination. The subsidy sucks everything away and there is very little left to invest.”
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