Recent Flood in Rivers In North India and Its Impact on Indian Agriculture

Introduction

India is no stranger to flooding. The country experiences monsoon rains every year, and these rains can often lead to flooding in low-lying areas. However, the recent floods in rivers in North India have been particularly severe. The floods have caused widespread damage to property and infrastructure, and have also had a significant impact on Indian agriculture. Recent Flood in Rivers In North India  and Its Impact on Indian Agriculture

Background

Floods are natural disaster that occurs when water overflows its natural boundaries and inundates land. Floods can be caused by several factors, including heavy rains, melting snow, and dam failures. In India, floods are most common during the monsoon season, which runs from June to September.

The monsoon rains are essential for agriculture in India. However, if the rains are too heavy, they can lead to flooding. This flooding can damage crops, wash away topsoil, and disrupt irrigation systems. The impact of flooding on agriculture can be significant and can lead to food shortages and price increases.

Recent floods

The recent floods in rivers in North India were caused by heavy monsoon rains. The rains began in June 2023 and continued for several weeks. The floods affected the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi.

The extent of the flooding was widespread. In Himachal Pradesh, the Beas River overflowed its banks, and several villages were submerged. In Uttarakhand, the Ganges River and its tributaries also overflowed, causing widespread damage. In Punjab and Haryana, the floods damaged crops and livestock. In Delhi, the Yamuna River overflowed, and several areas of the city were flooded.

Impact on agriculture

The impact of the floods on Indian agriculture has been significant. The floods have damaged crops, washed away topsoil, and disrupted irrigation systems. The damage to crops is estimated to be in the billions of rupees. The loss of topsoil will reduce crop yields in the future. The disruption of irrigation systems will make it difficult to irrigate crops and could lead to crop failures.

The impact of the floods on agriculture is likely to be felt for several years to come. The damage to crops will lead to food shortages, and the loss of topsoil will reduce crop yields. The disruption of irrigation systems will make it difficult to irrigate crops, and could lead to crop failures.

Conclusion

The recent floods in rivers in North India have had a significant impact on Indian agriculture. The damage to crops, the loss of topsoil, and the disruption of irrigation systems will have a lasting impact on the agricultural sector. The government of India is working to provide relief to the affected farmers and is also working to mitigate the impact of future floods.

Recommendations

The government of India should take steps to mitigate the impact of future floods. These steps could include:

• Building dams and levees to control flooding.
• Improving drainage systems to prevent waterlogging.
• Educating farmers about flood-resistant crops.
• Providing financial assistance to farmers who have lost crops due to flooding.

The government should also work to reduce the impact of climate change on flooding. Climate change is leading to more extreme weather events, including heavy rains. This is increasing the risk of flooding in India. The government should take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Conclusion

The recent floods in rivers in North India have had a significant impact on Indian agriculture. The damage to crops, the loss of topsoil, and the disruption of irrigation systems will have a lasting impact on the agricultural sector. The government of India is working to provide relief to the affected farmers and is also working to mitigate the impact of future floods. The government should take steps to reduce the impact of climate change on flooding, and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Safe agriculture food production is biggest challenge for human.

Invention and Experiment of science is making agriculture economical profitable. That is helpful for farmers and society. It is helping to fight with challenge of shortage of food. Another side of this help is alarming. Science is being misused in agriculture production. Use of agrochemical is increasing beyond the safe level of application. Residual effects of these chemicals are polluting the water, soil, air and environment. Food production is badly effected with these chemicals.

These chemicals are major reason behind chronicle disease and health problems. Chemicals are used in many forms in agriculture such fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, pesticides, growth regulators, growth promoters, nutrients, ripening agents, other plant physiological activities controllers. Overdose and unwanted use of these chemicals are making the agriculture production unsafe for the human consumption. This is the situation which can be controlled with the proper education and awareness among farmers.

Safe Food production is biggest challenge for human.

Vegetables grown near to major urban location are highly contaminated with the hazardous chemicals due to irrigation with polluted water. Green vegetable are consumed fresh kitchen, they are high in demand in urban area. Sewerage water is highly contaminated with heavy metals, industrial chemicals, and poisonous substances. Consumption of these vegetable cause many diseases and directly hurt to liver, kidney, digestive system. Practices of irrigation with polluted water are also polluting the soil and the contamination can’t be treated. Responsible Govt. departments are not monitoring and controlling these practices. It is direct negligence with the health of citizens.

Meat production near urban location is also facing same problems. Animal and birds are reared on high dose of chemicals. Heavy dose of antibiotics and weight gain hormones/medicines are injected to animals and birds. Consumption of the meat produced from these animals and birds are not safe. Diseases are developing susceptibility and resistance to antibiotics due to heavy dose of antibiotics intake with meat. In some cases meat of diseased animal and birds are supplied to out plate, which can transfer the hazardous virus, bacteria and other microorganism. Seafood is also contaminated with many chemicals. Micro plastics particles have entered in the seafood chain. Human is dumping garbage in sea. Sea is supplying the same garbage to human.

Milk and dairy products are also in the same line. They are also not safe even we leave adulteration in dairy product aside. High level of antibiotics, hormones, chemical residuals and aflatoxins are entering in our body with these dairy food products. Diet of dairy cattle is below the safe level. Farmers and feed companies used unsafe feed ingredients for cattle feed production. Non-recommended minerals source are used in cattle feed. 

Food grain is also not safe. They are produced with heavy dose of agrochemicals which is out of acceptable limit of agrochemicals. Nexus of profit making companies and traders is making it more complex. Regulatory bodies are silent on the unsafe production of agriculture food produce. It will be a big challenge which must be addressed before the issue of hunger. Hunger impacts only few individuals but unsafe food production will impact coming generations.

What did Indian farmers loose with scrap of new farmer law ?

Under the pressure of Indian farmers agitations central Indian  Govt scraped the new agriculture produce marketing law in year 2021. With the scrap of these laws farmers lost a new wave of development in Indian agriculture sector. To make the Indian agriculture attractive for new investment it requires a lot changes. Exiting Indian agriculture produce marketing laws were drafted and passed before green revolution and globalization.  Central Indin Govt drafted these agriculture law and passed from Indian parliament for the assistance of Indian farmers in year 2020. These laws were Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

 

In today’s scenario these existing APMC laws has emerged as barrior between farmers and consumers. Consumers can be end consumers, other state traders, food processing factories, agriculture commodity exporters, and commodity stockiest.  They can’t contact directly with farmers to buy produce. Buyers will require a local market committee registration. Though these boundation are not for farmers. Indian Farmer can sell his produce to anyone and anywhere but anyone can’t buy stock directly from farmers. 

Due to financial limitation and trade complexity farmer can’t deal directly with buyer. Delay of buying process cost to farmers/producer. Due to complexity of existing agriculture produce market laws new investor don’t invest in agriculture. Today farmers need a support for both backward market linkages (buying of farm inputs) and forward market linkages (selling of farm produces).

Today Indian farmer has become Information technology friendly he wants to grab latest agriculture technology and profitable crops but he becomes demoralised due to unavailability of the fast marketing facility. He can’t do the forward contract with specific buyer in advance on defined price. As per law all the agriculture commodities need to be auctioned in market for selling. Organic farming is increasing India. But market in not available for Indian farmers with full capacity. Organic farming can give an advantage to Indian agriculture sector at global agriculture market and trade. 

Even market committee infrastructure is not sufficient for peak season arrival. Farm produce remain in open sometimes it get damaged due to rain. There is no 100 % covered yard. Sometimes unwanted charges are put a farmers end like cleaning charges, weighing charges, mandi labour union charges. Under the table function of market yards are under control of traders and yard labours. 

Farmers must come with fresh idea and discussion. This movement must be started specially by the new generation youth farmers. They should come together and start fresh communication with government. Ask govt to provide solution for independent direct agriculture produce market in the form of new law as per global trade and business requirement. This will also lead to fresh investment in Indian agriculture sector. Indian agriculture needs investment, infrastructure, and innovation.  

Decoding the farmer’s problems : gap between agriculture farm & retail store

Farmers are fighting for loan waiver, minimum support price, high payout for their produce. If we remember the period of 20-25 back. We find that most of edible things available at local grocery shops, were in the raw form produced by the farmers. End consumer used to buy wheat and after cleaning he used get this wheat process into wheat flour from his local flour mill. Consumption of Jaggery and raw sugar was high in comparison to refined sugar. Most of spices were available in raw form in local grocery shops. Now the situation has changed we find that most of edible items are in processed form. We find very few items in raw form direct from farmers field.

There are two major points, first point that farmers have opportunity to grape some part of the market of processed products and another point that farmers are paying more by purchasing the processed items as 98% farmers are Net buyers of agriculture commodities. Besides this we find a lot of imported processed items in our grocery shops, it means either we don’t have raw items to process and market or out food processing industry is not able to full fill the local demand. Here we are not discussing about precious / costly or occasional items. We are discussing just regular items which we use every day.

Decoding the farmer’s problems : gap between agriculture farm & retail store

India Produce 80-90 Million MT wheat 40-45 Million MT is processed into the wheat flour. Demand of wheat flour is increasing. Farmers are trying to sell their produce in local market as raw. In another case for example pulses. Demand of clean and graded pulses is increasing in market. People don’t have to time clean and grade it. But farmers are selling the raw uncleaned ungraded pulses to local market. End customer goes for cleaned and graded pulses. Even farmers himself purchase clean and graded pulses. 

There huge opportunity for farmers in local market for process and sell their items. Farmers is missing this opportunity. Due to uncleaned and ungraded quality imported processed food makes spaces in Indian market and east share in demand and create competition. Indian produce 22 MT pulses, and import around 5 Million MT pulses. Imported pulses are in ready to use condition. It is completely cleaned and graded. Indian garlic is not getting the enough price in local market, but Chinese Garlic is creating space after a lot of transportation cost from Chinese agriculture farm to Indian kitchen.

This gap can be of three form, Quality, Quantity and Consumable / sellable form. Farmer can supply good quality product by cleaning and grading, farmers can produce the desired quantity as per demand of local market and in third gap farmers can process the agriculture commodity in consumable form. Farmers should be encouraged for selling of clean and graded commodity. Farmers should explore the local market and they should identify and process what they can sell in local market. 

Consistent quantity and quality are two major issues. IF farmers and govt can work on these issues then farmers can get good share of profit which is going to big industries and exporting countries. Profit share of regular items like Daal (lentil), Dalia (wheat), Aaata (flour), Pickle, Jaggery and other can be go directly to farmer’s pocket. 

Can traceability of agriculture produce help agriculture and farmers ?

Even after enough production farmers don’t get the fair price of his agriculture produce and agriculture produce don’t get the market & buyer. In industrial production everything is written in record and books are well maintained for regular audit & inspection. Everything is traceable if it is required. In agriculture production things are not recorded and traceable. Lack of traceability leads to many problems. Agriculture sector faces many problems like farmers suicide, bad farm loan, farm loan waiver, over production, food prices inflation, distress selling, throwing the production on road, storage problem, over import of agriculture commodities, black market selling, adulteration etc. 

What is agriculture traceability ? 

It is record keeping and mapping of the process of agriculture production to processing and reaching in hand of end user. Traceability will include the mapping of farm input supplier, farm inputs, farmers, farmers land, primary market of for agriculture commodity selling, secondary market of agriculture product selling, stockist, transporter, warehousing, processor, finish product stockist, whole seller, retailer and other point or steps involved in this process from farmer to consumer. 

Mapping of farm inputs and farm input sellers 

Quality and quantity of agriculture production depends on farm inputs. If the farm inputs are properly mapped then this will help farmers to ensure if they are getting right product of right quality, they are being not cheated, their product is recommended for particular crop. Last year there was case in MP that some product was recommended for Groundnut and farmers used in soybean crop. The crop was damaged. When the farmers raised the issue of crop damage against the company and administration then company gave an excuse that their product was not recommended for Soybean crop and farmers have used applied product for soybean crop. Once the inputs and inputs seller will be mapped then by the end of harvest season, actual production estimate will be calculated. 

Can traceability of agriculture produce help agriculture and farmers ?

It can be also mapped with farm loans so that govt can ensure that subsidized for agriculture purpose is used for right purpose. Insurance company can also estimate the risk and loss with the help of private data. Farm input is the base record which must be mapped and recorded in proper way. Govt can also monitor if seed companies are making huge profit or cheating with farmers. 

Once the farmers buy the product his land his operation should be recorded and mapped. It will ensure the farmer have done right operations, type of insect & disease has attacked. How were they managed and what type of chemicals were used? If will also give an estimate that how much crop is sown area. IF will be helpful in the case of crop damage, risk calculation. It will also ensure that production is coming to local market from the local area, it is not arrived from other state or imported from other country. It will also assist banks and finical institutes if farmer have enough production for making payment or not. Is it leads that farmers are in problem then his loan can be adjusted as per the norms? It will help govt to identify the right beneficiary. This is most crucial step. If govt has to give incentive to farmers for complete mapping, then govt should do it. Farmer is the start point of agriculture food production then it will helpful to keep the whole chain (from production to end consumer) clean. 

Post harvesting mapping 

Once the agriculture production has mapped then production will come in market for trading and processing. These are point of entry of external material and point to wipe out the production. Primary market of agriculture produce is main point for mapping and traceability. After primary market selling agriculture produces normally go to processing industries and these industries are maintaining the record regularly. If will give an idea that what is farmers getting, what is industry investing in processing and what is industry getting from selling of produce. 

Traceability information and labeling 

After the traceability and mapping there must be mandatory discloser of information under a code which can help end consumer that from where his product is coming, at what stage his product is processed and what type of contents/ingredients are used in preparation of his consumable product. This must be available on public website. Govt can trace the location of the produce, Illegal hording, point of adulteration, detail of stock laying at ware house, transport, processing factory and sells points, point of tax default and many more. Traceability can’t be complete solution but it can give relief to agriculture more than 70-80 %. Any extra profit is made from a channel can be shared with original producer of agriculture produce or Farmer.

Stray cattle /animal management in agriculture

Stray animal / cattle is emerging as a major challenge in agriculture specially in India. They destroy crop at different stages. Farmers keep running behind cattle and cattle keep running behind green farm. Farmers have to keep watching their farm to save their farm from attack of stray animal.

In fact, stray animal is not hazardous or harmful. Due to hunger it keeps moving here and there. It eats less food but destroy more crop due to movement. Sometimes it destroys mature crop then loses are high.

To keep their farm safe, all farmers stay awakened whole night to keep their individual farm safe. This problem can be solved at community level. Generally, farmers send animals from one village to another village. Animals of two three villages make a group of 40-50 animals. This group enters in a farm and destroy crop very fast due to movement. Instead of above action farmers can make a stray animal yard in every village. On an average hardly, there will be 10-20 animals in each village.

Generally, there is village panchayat land or some grazing land or some other public land in every village. If there is no grazing land, then at village level two or three neighboring farmers can make a animal yard on joint land. 1/2 acre land is sufficient for that. Now the question is food and take care.  Village can collectively arrange straw for cattle and water.

Benefit 1: If cattle are open and stray then generally they make 10-time loss of what they eat due to movement during grazing. Now these cattle will be feed collectively then these cattle will not make loss to farms.  

Benefit 2: Farmers will not have to make overnight monitoring of their farms. They can make a normal monitoring of their farms. They need not to worry for three four months

Benefit 3: Last benefit is the most important. These cattle will give nutrient rich manure in return. Generally dry straw takes 4-5 months to decompose totally. If the cattle will eat this straw within 12 hour it will convert into dung. This dung will decompose within 15-30 days and same material can be used in farms as manure.

Cattle are symbiotic in nature for farmers. Due to individual effort and poor management stray cattle seems a problem. If it is managed properly then this is not a problem. Community level problem is solution is beneficial for farmers. It is effective way to enrich the organic carbon and other micro nutrients in farm soil.