Re-Powering Agriculture
Successive farmer protests in India are manifestations of chronic agrarian distress and persistent downtrends in the rural economy. Ironically, while contributing less than one-fifth of the national GDP, agriculture employs more than two-fifths of the workforce and is the primary source of livelihoods for nearly three-fifths of the population. The discourse around the current farmer protests, mobilised against the three farm laws enacted by the Union government, has underscored major fault lines in India’s approach to agriculture which is characterised by a dependency on public procurement, environmentally-damaging and climate-vulnerable farm practices, and unsustainable patterns of input intensity and subsidies.
Undoubtedly, the farm sector is in dire need of a new paradigm of development. However, there is no single fool-proof reform pathway to address multidimensional agrarian distress and peculiar economic enmeshments. The sector needs coordinated and complementary interventions from multiple leverage points. Here, we make a case for using the electricity transition to propel the agriculture sector towards resilient development and growth.
The electrification of farmlands during the 1970s and 1980s was a major boost to agriculture. Access to electricity along with government-promoted credit for pumps enabled farmers to draw groundwater for irrigation, and thus, facilitated a shift to high-yielding varieties in several part of India. This State-directed agriculture promotion – the Green Revolution – resulted in increased farm productivity that helped mitigate national food scarcity, enhance farmers’ income that helped manage chronic poverty in rural India, and thus, mobilise the peasantry as an important political constituency. These favourable outcomes simultaneously created perverse incentives for the unrestricted expansion of unmeasured – and often free – access to electricity for farm usage, in return for farmers’ political favour.
As the Economic Survey 2015-16 claimed, India’s agriculture has been “a victim of its own success”, by becoming cereal-centric, input-intensive and regionally biased. The developmental, economic and political leverage gained by farmers has started fading in recent years. While being a net food exporter, India houses more than a third of the world’s malnourished children, implying a widespread nutrition deficiency. Despite sustained efforts on poverty eradication and increasing support for farmers, farm income has failed to keep pace with inflation and input costs. A shift in electoral politics from demands for economic equality to identity-based mobilisations has eroded the political salience of the peasantry. The outcome is an entrenched vicious cycle involving water and input-intensive crop choices, overproduction driving down prices, groundwater depletion driving up energy demands, and politically endorsed, but economically unviable, subsidy demands.
After half a century, farmlands in India are set for an energy shift. As part of the ongoing electricity transition, the Centre has committed to solarise irrigation pumps (both electricity and diesel powered), with an initial target of 30.8 GW of solar capacity. The Centre’s PM-KUSUM scheme provides financial assistance for off-grid standalone pumps, grid-connected pumps and solar agriculture feeders, and requires the states to match this support in a bid to enable farmers to switch to solar power. A few states are already pursuing utility-scale solar to supply power to farmlands through the grid. These approaches to solarise irrigation have unique comparative advantages, but the objectives are common: first, provide reliable day-time supply for farm use, a longstanding demand; second, rapidly scale-up distributed renewables to accelerate the electricity transition; third, ease the subsidy pressures on discoms, rate payers and the state by tapping cheap solar power. Further, the grid-connected solar pump model seeks to supplement farmers’ income by ensuring discom buyback of surplus power, and thus, contribute to the larger objective of augmenting farmers’ income. These electricity-centric interventions, seeking to address electricity problems, are necessary steps, but are not sufficient to address deep-rooted agrarian distress.
Going forward there are two paths. First, scale up the current interventions to cover all electric and diesel-powered irrigation pumps by 2030. If successful, this would help farmers with day-time supply, ease the subsidy burden, decarbonise one-sixth of electricity demand and alleviate a portion of India’s diesel demand (both account for about eight percent of emissions nationally) and achieve about one-third of India’s ambitious 450 GW renewable target. These are important goals. But the pursuit of these goals within electricity and climate silos leaves the agriculture sector bereft of the potentially transformative effects of a transition.
The second path is to stitch together a comprehensive strategy to re-power agriculture that builds on the energy transition and seeks to address multiple and simultaneous economic, environmental, and political challenges in agriculture. This will require an assessment of multiple objectives, understanding the linkages, and accordingly, bundling policies. We suggest three layers of priorities for a holistic approach to re-powering agriculture.
As a first step, it is important to bundle solarisation of irrigation with upgradation of irrigation infrastructure, promote agro-climatic-zone-specific crop choices, and factor in nutrition security. Advanced irrigation infrastructure like energy efficient pumps and micro-irrigation systems have demonstrated the potential to reduce energy and water demands. While agro-climate-zone-specific crop choices ease unsustainable pressures on land and groundwater, they simultaneously offer opportunities to meet the nutritional needs of the country. These measures are already part of current policy priorities and are backed by budgetary support, but are promoted in siloes. Bundling these together could unwind the vicious cycle in agriculture simultaneously with electricity transition.
Second, solarisation in agriculture is also an opportunity to boost rural livelihoods. The Centre has already committed to doubling farmers’ income by 2022. ‘Solar crop’ – a concept encapsulating the surplus electricity generation from farm solar systems– has been endorsed to supplement farmers’ income. Solarisation of irrigation pumps, if successful, will result in substantial seasonal surplus electricity in rural areas. The government may promote productive use of this surplus power from farmlands to promote rural industries for value addition to agri-produce. Such an approach would create employment opportunities and non-farm incomes in rural areas. Moreover, productive use of surplus power may limit the wasteful use of electricity and groundwater. However, the success of these measures will also depend on the creation of necessary infrastructures, access to finance and market linkages.
Third, a complementary priority is to promote changes in farm practices that minimise pressures on natural resources like groundwater and land, and limit other environmental damage like stubble burning as well as seek to build resiliency to climate change effects. This would require sustained extension services, on-farm demonstration, and incentives for resilient practices.
The government has taken an important step in prioritising agriculture in the electricity transition. Using the transition as a catalyst for agricultural transformation is a complex process; it involves transaction costs and will be a long-drawn process. However, a comprehensive approach can reap multiple co-benefits, including addressing recurring redistributive pressures in electricity, minimising the causes and effects of climate change in agriculture, as well as securing a resilient rural economy and livelihoods. A timebound strategy, and coordination between agencies over the decade of 2020s could re-power the agriculture sector and empower citizens dependent on farm livelihoods.
(Environmentality is a collection of ideas, perspectives, and commentary by researchers at the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the authors. They do not represent institutional views.)
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