Rice production to be more climate-robust

India has a rice production reaching around 100 million tons on a yearly basis. And is the next largest, second to only China. As the climate is changing and water already being a scarce luxury, one would wish for the methods and ways of rice production to evolve as well. It’s no secret that production of rice requires water, lots of water. And most of rice cultivation in India is done by utilizing artificial watering.
ClimaRice is a research project on climate change adaptation and rice production, livelihoods, and food security in India. The main emphasis of the ClimaRice project is to develop local ownership through active participation of stakeholders in the design, implementation, and management of adaptation strategies to ensure the sustainability of rice production.
The Overall Project goal is to: Reduce uncertainties in future monsoon projections, demonstrate the applicability of selected adaptation techniques and enhance stakeholder adaptive capacity to climate change on rice production and irrigation water management practices through field demonstration, institutional and capacity strengthening.
Access to water is perhaps the biggest challenge that Indian rice cultivating farmers face. And so far, one of the more noticeable and important experience from the project, ClimaRice, was methods of rice production that required lesser water. This they achieved by planting the seed directly into earth. Very much unlike the traditional way of doing it.
The method has been tried out in two villages in India for a period of two seasons. And it seems, besides being lesser water requiring, they also got better and more crops. And the expenses were considerably reduced as well. Farmers surely enjoyed the last bit.
Even though the method isn’t all that practical for the majority of rice cultivating farmers, many could still make use of it. The method would be more considerable to farmers situated further away from the artificial water network, because these would likely be more affected.
The method is not new, and has been used before in other states of India as well. But it became lesser popular when the Indian Government built the elongated channel systems for watering. However the method is now picking up popularity as scarcity for water is increasing.