Tag Archives: farmers

We know flash floods; what are ‘flash’ droughts [Details]

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At the tail end of winter in 2015, the ground in the Wimmera in northeastern Victoria had been a little, dry but conditions weren’t too bad for farmers. The crop season was going well.

The start of September looked promising. It was cool, and there were decent rains

A few weeks later, summer weather had arrived early. At the start of October, the soils were baked dry. Lentils and other pulse crops were devastated.

This kind of event, where drier-than-normal conditions transform into severe or extreme drought in the space of weeks, is called a “flash drought”. While flash droughts are still not well understood, our research studies how they occur in Australia – which may help move us towards being able to warn of flash drought in advance.

wheat/Photo:monash.edu

The different kinds of drought

Scientists typically talk about drought as a lack or deficit of available moisture to meet various needs, such as in agriculture or for water resources. We often classify different types of drought depending on where there’s a lack of water, or what its effects are:

  • Meteorological drought is a deficit of rain or other precipitation
  • Agricultural drought is a deficit of moisture in the soil and evaporating or transpiring into the air
  • Hydrological drought is a deficit of water in runoff and surface storage such as dams
  • Socioeconomic drought is a lack of water that affects the supply and demand of economic goods and services.

Different types of drought can occur at the same time, or a drought may evolve from one type to another. Droughts can last from months to decades, and can cover areas from a local region to most of the continent.

Recently, a new characterisation of drought has been added to the drought spectrum: “Flash” drought.

What causes flash droughts?

Flash droughts are droughts that begin suddenly and then rapidly become more intense. Droughts only occur when there’s insufficient rainfall, but flash droughts intensify rapidly over timescales of weeks to months because of other factors such as high temperatures, low humidity, strong winds and clear skies.

These conditions make the air “thirsty”, which meteorologists call “increased evaporative demand”. This means more water evaporates from the surface and transpires from plants, and moisture in the soil is rapidly depleted.

Under these conditions, evaporation and transpiration increase for as long as moisture is available at the surface. When this moisture is depleted and there’s no rain to replenish it, the lack of water limits evaporation and transpiration – and vegetation becomes stressed as drought emerges.

Why haven’t we heard about flash drought before?

Flash droughts have always existed, and were first described in 2002. However, some particularly devastating flash droughts over the past decade have led to a surge of interest among researchers.

One such drought happened in the US Midwest. In May 2012, 30% of the continental United States was experiencing abnormally dry conditions. By August, that had extended to more than 60%. Although other rapidly developing droughts had been seen before, the widespread impacts of this event caught the attention of the US public and government.

Flash droughts are also increasingly a focus of attention in China and Australia. One of the few studies of flash drought in Australia examined an event when conditions in the country’s east suddenly changed from wet in December 2017, to dry in January 2018.

Anecdotal reports from farmers in the northern Murray-Darling Basin indicated removal of livestock from properties, and sheep numbers at record lows. By June 2018, there were reports of trees dying and a desert-like landscape, with little grass cover.

Wheat prices spike due to climate change: Study

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Rising temperatures are harmful to wheat yields. However, crop yields do not provide a holistic vision of food security. The impacts of climate change on wheat price, livelihood and agricultural market fundamentals are also important to food security but have been largely overlooked.

An international research team has now estimated the comprehensive impact of climate change and extreme climate events on global wheat supply and the demand chain in a 2 ℃ warmer world by using a novel climate-wheat-economic ensemble modelling approach.

The effect of CO2 fertilization could cancel out temperature stress on crops, with a slightly greater wheat yield under 2 ℃ warming as a result. However, increases in global yield do not necessarily result in lower consumer prices. Indeed, the modelling results suggest that global wheat price spikes would become higher and more frequent, thus placing additional economic pressure on daily livelihood.

The findings, by scientists from six countries, were published in One Earth on August 19.

“This counterintuitive result is initially driven by uneven impacts geographically. Wheat yields are projected to increase in high-latitude wheat exporting countries but show decreases in low-latitude wheat importing countries,” said lead author ZHANG Tianyi, an agrometeorologist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Co-author Karin van der Wiel, a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, further explained: “This leads to higher demand for international trade and higher consumer prices in the importing countries, which would deepen the traditional trade patterns between wheat importing and exporting countries.”

Earlier researchers pointed out that trade liberalization would help mitigate climate stress via improving market mobility. The current research team revealed that such policies could indeed reduce consumers’ economic burden from wheat products. However, the impact on farmers’ income would be mixed. For example, trade liberalization policy under 2 ℃ warming could stabilize or even improve farmers’ income in wheat exporting countries but would reduce income for farmers in wheat importing countries.

“These results would potentially cause a larger income gap, creating a new economic inequality between wheat importing and exporting countries,” said WEI Taoyuan, co-author and an economic scientist at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research. ZHANG further explained more dependence on imports could lower the wheat self-sufficiency ratio, thus causing a “vicious negative cycle” for wheat importing and less-developed countries in the long term.

“This study highlights that effective measures in trade liberalization policies are necessary to protect grain food industries in importing countries, support resilience, and enhance global food security under climate change,” said Frank Selten, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and co-author of the study.

Building a new India: Pledge to Double Farmers Income by 2022

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In order to improve the economic condition of the farmers, Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has set up an ambitious target in front of the nation. The goal is to double the income of the farmers by 2022. It has been for the first time, a Prime Minister has put such a target in front of the compatriots for the welfare of the farmers. Under the able guidance of Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, the Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Ministry has to achieve this target by 2022. The Ministry is committed to making his dreams come true. Farmers and officers are implementing schemes to increase the income of the farmers. Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) organised pledge taking ceremonies in 562 districts of the country between August 19 to September 11, 2017, as a clarion call to farmers to double their income by 2022 and a total of 47,08,47 farmers and agricultural workers participated in it.

• KVKs organised this program in the 562 districts of the country. The program saw the participation of the State Government and the Central Government officers, Agricultural Officers, Students and a large number of farmers in each district.
• Speaker Smt. Sumitra Mahajan attended one of the events.
• In two places, the Governor of the respective states participated.
• Chief Ministers of three states attended four pledge-taking ceremonies.
• Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh attended five ceremonies.
• 49 Central Ministers participated in pledge taking ceremonies at 79 locations (Districts).
• In 284 places (Districts), Members of Parliament attended the program.
• In 111 locations (Districts), State Ministers attended the program.
• In 350 locations (Districts), the MLAs attended the program.
• In 398 places (Districts), Chairman of District Panchayat attended the program.

Cabinet approves New Central Sector Scheme – “Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana”

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The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has approved the renaming of the new Central Sector Scheme – SAMPADA (Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters) as “Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY) ” for the period of 2016-20 coterminous with the 14th Finance Commission cycle. Earlier, CCEA in its meeting held in May, 2017 approved the new Central Sector Scheme – SAMPADA (Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters) with same allocation and period .

Objective:

The objective of PMKSY is to supplement agriculture, modernize processing and decrease Agri-Waste.

Financial Allocation:

PMKSY with an allocation of Rs. 6,000 crore is expected to leverage investment of Rs. 31,400 crore, handling of 334 lakh MT agro-produce valuing Rs. 1,04,125 crore, benefit 20 lakh farmers and generate 5,30,500 direct/ indirect employment in the country by the year 2019-20.

Impact:

• The implementation of PMKSY will result in creation of modern infrastructure with efficient supply chain management from farm gate to retail outlet.

• It will provide a big boost to the growth of food processing sector in the country.

• It will help in providing better prices to farmers and is a big step towards doubling of farmers’ income.

• It will create huge employment opportunities especially in the rural areas.

• It will also help in reducing wastage of agricultural produce, increasing the processing level, availability of safe and convenient processed foods at affordable price to consumers and enhancing the export of the processed foods.

Measures to give a boost to Food Processing Sector:

Food Processing Sector has emerged as an important segment of the Indian economy in terms of its contribution to GDP, employment and investment. During 2015-16, the sector constituted as much as 9.1 and 8.6 per cent of GVA in Manufacturing and Agriculture sector respectively.

The manifesto of NDA Government stresses upon incentivizing the setting up of food processing industry for providing better income for the farmers and creating jobs.

Government has taken various other measures to boost food processing sector as follows:

(a) To provide impetus to investment in food processing and retail sector, govt. has allowed 100% FDI in trading including through e-commerce, in respect of food products manufactured and / or produced in India. This will benefit farmers immensely and will create back – end infrastructure and significant employment opportunities.

(b) The govt. has also set up a Special Fund of Rs. 2000 crore in NABARD to make available affordable credit at concessional rate of interest to designated food parks and agro processing units in the designated food parks.

(c) Food and agro-based processing units and cold chain infrastructure have been brought under the ambit of Priority Sector Lending (PSL) to provide additional credit for food processing activities and infrastructure thereby, boosting food processing, reducing wastage, create employment and increasing farmers’ income.

Background:

PMKSY is an umbrella scheme incorporating ongoing schemes of the Ministry like Mega Food Parks, Integrated Cold Chain and Value Addition Infrastructure, Food Safety and Quality Assurance Infrastructure, etc. and also new schemes like Infrastructure for Agro-processing Clusters, Creation of Backward and Forward Linkages, Creation / Expansion of Food Processing & Preservation Capacities.

Setting up of Spice Park in Telangana

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Central Government has received proposal from the State Government of Telangana for establishing a Spice Park at Nizamabad for turmeric. It has been intimated to the State Government that the Spices Board would extend all technical support if land and funds for establishing the Spice park is provided by the State. Central Government has also approved the setting up of a Spice Development Agency (SDA) for Telangana having headquarters at Warangal for co-coordinating with the State / Central Agencies implementing programmes for research, production, marketing, quality improvement and export of spices, including chilli and turmeric.

Government implements several programmes for providing assistance to spice farmers, including Chilli and Turmeric farmers, which, on one hand aim at increasing production and ensuring remunerative prices to farmers through pre and post-harvest management and support activities, and on the other hand assist the industry through adoption of upgraded technology in spice processing, setting up of quality evaluation labs, quality certification etc for facilitating exports.

Spices Board is implementing the “Export Oriented Production, Export Development & Promotion of Spices” Scheme wherein assistance is provided to spices farmers which, inter alia, includes development of infrastructure for common processing facilities in Spice Parks, adaptation of upgraded technology in spice processing, setting up of quality evaluation labs for sampling and testing of the export consignments for meeting quality specifications of consuming countries, assistance to farmers on post-harvest quality improvement, imparting training to farmers in Good Agricultural Practices etc.

This information was given by the Commerce and Industry Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.