Time is ripe to start focusing on the whole agricultural value chain to tackle the three-fold challenges of rural livelihoods, climate adaptation and mitigation
Photo: iStock Agriculture has become a point of focus in the past few years in the context of climate change. This focus is not misplaced, as agricultural activities are responsible for 19-29 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 14 per cent of India’s total GHG emissions.
To sustainably develop our food system, the scientific community, policymakers and civil society have dedicated most attention to production of food, with various interventions like the development of new hybrid varieties, the introduction of water-efficient irrigation systems and switching away from chemical inputs.
But the time is ripe to start focusing on the whole agricultural value chain rather than just the production to tackle the three-fold challenges of rural livelihoods, adaptation and mitigation.
There are three major reasons for this: First is the environmental impacts of these value chains' post-production. Second is the need to develop efficient supply chains where the sustainably produced agricultural output can compete with established value chains of their unsustainable counterparts. And the third is that this approach will distribute the burden of the sustainability transition from the farmer to other actors along the supply chains.
Depending on the commodity and whether it is meant for the domestic market or for exports, there are several steps after production before it reaches the end consumer. These include value addition and packaging, procurement, distribution via land, air, and sea, international trade, consumption patterns, storage at various steps and wastage during the whole life cycle.
Many commodities like sugar and rubber also undergo industrial-scale processing, which may come with its own environmental footprint in the form of water pollution and high energy use.
The environmental impacts of these other steps can significantly alter the footprint of a commodity. Let’s take cotton for example. The energy-use and emissions from cotton farming are just a fraction of the total energy-use and emissions in the whole cotton yarn value chain, according to a 2016 study.
Another example is the horticulture sector. India is one of the largest producers and consumers of several key commodities like bananas and cashew and a major exporter of commodities like onions. Since these are generally perishable goods, they need cold storage at various points of the supply chain, especially during transportation.
India has a cold-storage capacity covering only 6.7 per cent of its gross produce, which should increase to about 20 per cent in the coming years amid the increasing production, keeping the needs of the agriculture trade in mind, another study published in 2016 noted.
The current installed cold-storage capacity accounts for 1.2 gigawatts or 0.5 per cent of the total installed electrical capacity, which may increase to 7.8 GW by 2030. How this increase in demand for electrical energy would be met will determine the underlying emissions from the cold chain.
The past decade has seen a renewed push for farmers to go ‘organic’, which is happening through myriad approaches — zero-budget natural farming, agroecology, organic agriculture and regenerative agriculture. Such approaches, at least partially, advocate turning away from the industrial chemical-intensive monoculture model to a more nature-friendly production system with characteristics like the use of biological inputs, multi-cropping and seed conservation.
While debates on productivity continue, the positive impacts of such alternative approaches for soil health, water management and biodiversity are prompting keen interest from policymakers. States like Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Sikkim are taking the lead, coming up with state-specific policies and raising funding from various national and international sources, to fund programs to train more farmers in nature-friendly techniques and increase the area under organic agriculture.
The Government of India has recently launched the National Mission on Natural Farming, to give a national-level policy push to these practices.
A major challenge, however, has been on the marketing and distribution front, as the sustainably farmed produce must compete with the conventionally farmed produce which has well-established supply chains, both domestic and international.
The challenge for sustainably farmed produce on the demand side is to reach the right markets where price-conscious Indian consumers are willing to pay the premium price and can trust the authenticity of eco-friendly claims.
On the supply side, farmers should have access to established chains and processes to protect them from the associated risks of the transition.
In view of this situation, there is a need for all actors to develop reliable sourcing, distribution and marketing channels. Eco-certification initiatives need to be accompanied by the creation of new demand and markets, and bringing down the price to comparable levels with conventionally-farmed produce.
Traditional channels of distribution may sometimes not be suitable for naturally farmed produce, as it needs to be handled separately, fetch higher prices and reach niche markets.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw numerous basket models and farm-to-plate start-ups cropping up around metropolises. But their reach was limited to the urban well-to-do consumer.
A focus on the farm also leads to an undue amount of focus on the farmers, leading to a disproportionate burden on them to meet the market and policy requirements. A majority of farmers in India are small and marginal, with limited agency and resources to bring a radical change in their farming practices.
A just transition in this sector would entail the fair distribution of the burden of action across the value chain, as clearly the environmental impacts are distributed too, while securing rural livelihoods and farm incomes.
Several small and large agri-businesses are introducing sustainability initiatives in their operations, by way of reducing waste and recycled packaging, providing quality planting material, investing in research to develop new varieties and efficient technologies as well as providing hand-holding support to small farmers from whom they source their key ingredients.
This is appreciable as the actors with considerably more agency and resources are taking responsibility and leading the change. But agri-businesses would still need to invest more to build the capacity of farmers, provide adequate safety nets and provide extension services.
The emergence of international climate commitments for the private sector has led to several businesses voluntarily setting sustainability targets. Some of these are key players in their respective commodity-specific sectors and can play an important role in the transition. They can facilitate both a micro-level transition at the farm level and a supply-chain-level transition by transforming how farm produce is procured, processed, packaged and transported.
Conceptualising sustainability in the agricultural commodity sector by making the value chain the unit of analysis and intervention can go a long way in meeting the challenges that agricultural production must address, that is mitigating environmental footprints, adapting to a changing climate, while delivering economic benefits to the farmers and other actors in the value chain.
This can facilitate both adoption of new environment-friendly technologies and practices and the capacity building of farmers.
Puneet Bansal is a Bengaluru-based researcher associated with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE). The story was written with inputs from Manan Bhan, Fellow in Residence at ATREE, and Satwiki Adla, Research Assistant at ATREE.
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.
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