Indian agriculture sector stands a perpetrator of global warming

Main agricultural sources in the biological generation of methane have been the flooded rice fields and anaerobic animal waste processing. Shockingly in India, the agricultural sector itself produces a whopping 80% of methane created in the country; of which 23% is especially from paddy cultivated regions. Almost 65% of Indian farmers have been solely dependent on rice in terms of employment as well as feeding themselves. The rice-centric obsession has ensured that rice gets cultivated even in those regions where it is environmentally not suitable.

It must be brought to notice here that the Indian Council of Agriculture Research, using complex spatially photographed data, had divided the country into 15 agro-climatic zones. The purpose here was to promote only those crops in particular environmentally sustainable regions. But almost nobody cared to follow the zone theory.

One example – much against the environment quotient, rice gets cultivated in the Ganganagar District of Rajasthan ably supported by the Indira Gandhi Canal. The effect – malaria, soil salinity and environmental destruction galore. Such examples are a dime a dozen; India needs to look within, or be doomed without.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2006

An IIPM and Management Guru Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative