The businessline Agri & Commodity Summit 2025, presented by NABARD and co-powered by FSSI and Yara, discussed topics such as irregular monsoons, climate change, new seeds, drone didis, and bio energy.
| Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
The challenges posed by climate change in the agriculture sector was one of the key themes discussed in this year’s businessline Agri and Commodity Summit 2025 held in New Delhi on Friday (January 10, 2025).
At the inaugural session, Union Agriculture Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi said the Centre has adopted a two-pronged approach — adaptation and mitigation to address these challenges. Secretary of the Union Ministry of Cooperation Ashish Kumar Bhutani said the primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) can play a vital role in building climate change resilience in rural India.
Devesh Chaturvedi, Agriculture Secretary and K.V.Shaji, Chairman, NABARD, at the businessline Agri & Commodity Summit 2025, in New Delhi on Friday ( January 10, 2025).
| Photo Credit:
Bijoy Ghosh
Dr. Chaturvedi said adaptation strategies include creating drought and flood-resistant crop varieties, implementing efficient water management techniques, and providing a cushion through crop insurance in the event of extreme natural calamities. He added that the mitigation efforts include promoting natural farming to reduce chemical input use and improve soil health. “The government also aims to use carbon market incentives to encourage farmers to adopt climate-smart practices. This comprehensive approach seeks to ensure food security and farmer livelihoods in the face of a changing climate,” he said.
Mr. Bhutani said climate change is impacting everyone and collective action should be taken to address the challenge. “The crop insurance scheme covers 40% of farmers. We need to get every single farmer covered under the scheme,” he said adding that his Ministry is in the process of making two lakh multi-purpose PACS so that the traditional role of PACS could be expanded beyond credit and input supply.
“We are also planning to set up 70,000 grain storage points across the country, with PACS potentially playing a role in their operation. Besides addressing the critical issue of grain storage in rural areas, this initiative would reduce transportation costs and act as procurement centres,” he said.
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) Chairman Shaji K.V. said accelerating green lending across sectors, providing access to data, internal green transformation and resource mobilisation to fund climate-resilient activities are the four pillars that are necessary to address the challenges posed by climate change. “We are building a comprehensive data warehouse for agriculture and rural sectors. This initiative, developed in partnership with various agencies including UNDP, will help formalise farmers, especially tenant farmers, and improve their access to credit and government schemes,” Mr. Shaji said.
The summit saw sessions on the irregular monsoons, climate change and new seeds, interaction with drone didis and solar didis, digitisation, bio energy and price risk management. businessline Agri & Commodity Summit 2025 is presented by NABARD and co-powered by Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSSI) in association with Yara. The associate partners are NCDEX, Indofil, Bayer, Hindustan Urvarak & Rasayan Ltd, Kribhco Agri, NSE, Aqua Group and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. The banking partner is State Bank of India (SBI) while the broadcast partner is NDTV Profit.
Published – January 10, 2025 10:45 pm IST
