Budget 2025 to lay road map for climate-resilient farming
The Budget 2025-26 is expected to boost climate-resilient farming by promoting natural farming, climate-resilient seeds, and micro-irrigation. Key allocations include PM Kisan (₹60,000 crore), crop insurance (₹14,600 crore), and edible oil production under the National Mission. The government aims to reduce import dependency on edible oils and pulses, enhance productivity, and mitigate climate change impacts through various schemes.
The coming Budget is likely to announce several incentives aimed at boosting availability of climate-resilient seed varieties especially in cereals, pulses and oilseeds, besides aiming to promote agricultural practices like natural farming for reduction of chemical fertiliser usage, official sources said.
They added that the Budget 2025-26 is also expected to provide a road map to raise productivity of several crops, keeping in view the rising incidence of extreme weather events like unseasonal rains, rise in temperature and regional variations in rainfall patterns.
Stating that climate change has started to impact agriculture significantly, an official said: “We are focusing on adaptation to climate change through ensuring climate resilient varieties seeds reach farmers, provide farmers with highly subsidised crop insurance while ensuring that more focus is given on drip irrigation and promotion of natural farming,”.
In August last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had released 109 high yielding, climate resilient and biofortified seeds varieties of 61 crops which the agriculture ministry is working towards taking into farmers’ fields over next couple of years.
Since the new government assumed office in June last year several initiatives to boost output of oilseeds and pulses have been announced besides the launch of a scheme aimed at promoting natural farming aimed at reducing use of chemcial fertilizer.
Officials said that currently there is no proposal to increase Rs 6000 annually given to around 9.8 crore farmers in three equal installments under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan) which costs the exchequer around Rs 60,000 crore.
The official said the efforts would be to support and protect farmers against adverse impact of climate change.
To promote climate smart agriculture, the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman may announce the second phase of Rs 1000 crore Nabventures focussing on the startups in agriculture and allied sector. Nabard in collaboration with the agriculture ministry last year had launched Rs 750 crore an agri fund for start-ups and rural enterprises (Agri-SURE) aimed at early stage start-ups.
For 2024-25, Rs 1.32 lakh crore has been budgeted for the department of agriculture and farmers welfare, including Rs 9,941 crore for the agricultural research, with the launch of initiatives in the last few months, actual expenditures could be higher than budgeted.
A major chunk of the budget for the agriculture ministry is allocated towards PM Kisan (Rs 60,000 crore), Under the modified interest subvention scheme (Rs 22,600 crore), Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (Rs 14,600 crore).
In October, to reduce import dependence and achieve self-sufficiency on edible oil, the cabinet had approved the national mission on edible oils – oilseeds with an outlay of Rs 10,103 crore aimed at boosting edible oil production from the current level of 12.7 million tonne (MT) to 20.2 MT by 2031.
This is in addition to Rs 11,040 crore fund for boosting production of palm oil in 2021 domestic oil palm cultivation, the mission aims to bring 6.5 lakh hectares under oil palm plantations by 2025-26.
India imports around 58% and 15% of edible oil and pulses consumption.
“Expanding micro irrigation into canal command areas and incentivising crops diversification into oilseeds, oil palm and millets would not only increase climate resilience but also bolster farmers’ incomes,” Rahul Chauhan, managing director, Netafim India, which focuses on drip irrigation products, said.
Earlier this month, cabinet has approved has extended two crop insurance schemes — the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and its sub-scheme the Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme — by on one more year till 2025-26 to align their implementation with the 15th Finance Commission period.
The total outlay for the crop insurance schemes has been increased to Rs 69,515 crore for 2021-22 to 2025-26, from Rs 66,550 crore for FY21 to FY25.
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Source : The Financial Express
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