Green investment for sustainable agriculture: A missed opportunity?

India must develop a sustainable and resilient agriculture framework to steadiness meals & gasoline safety and obtain environmental sustainability. Budget 2022-23 has highlighted a slew of recent inexperienced tasks within the power and transportation sectors. However, it continues to be skewed in direction of the normal technique within the agriculture sector because it primarily focuses on meals and fertiliser subsidies and grants. Unless the nation instantly implements a sustainable and climate-smart agricultural system, meals safety and environmental sustainability are in danger.

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s local weather targets requires fast realignment of personal and public funds. While coverage consideration is concentrated on dawn sectors, the technological development of the agriculture sector is commonly ignored. This can be mirrored in local weather financing information. The power and transport sectors noticed the most important financial movement, local weather finance within the agriculture sector accounted for lower than 2.2% (US$ 14 billion) of the entire in 2019-20. Developing nations want US$ 265 billion yearly to make agriculture sustainable by 2050. However, the financing want of agriculture, having an immense want for investments for adaptation tasks, just isn’t being met. 

Figure:  Global local weather finance in 2019-20 (billion USD)

Source: (CPI, 2021)

In India, the agriculture sector accounted for 14.4% of whole emissions in 2016 and has remained comparatively resilient in progress even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It grew at 3.6% in 2020-21 and additional improved to 3.9% in 2021-22 however stays susceptible to hostile results of local weather change.

The advantages of adopting sustainable agriculture are multi-fold. However, the present coverage setting just isn’t supportive of reaching sustainable agriculture. The lack of coverage enter may also be seen on this yr’s union finances. The agenda of greening agriculture appeared to lag within the finances allocations. This turns into clear from the online discount of roughly 17% within the funding for Management of Natural Resources (below Department of Agriculture Research and Education) in comparison with final yr’s estimate, which incorporates Natural Resource Management Institutes, together with Agro-Forestry Research and Climate Resilient Agriculture Initiative. Additionally, the restructuring of ‘Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana’ to incorporate erstwhile schemes has led to extra uncertainty and confusion about how the allotted finances of Rs. 10,433 crores can be utilised and positively influence India’s net-zero and chemical-free agriculture path. 

The transformation of agriculture to a system with low GHG emissions and a sustainable mannequin requires substantial investments. Thus, modern insurance policies and monetary mechanisms are wanted to realize sustainability. We opine 4 crucial coverage suggestions for India to handle the problem on this context. 

Developing inexperienced finance taxonomy

The lack of a harmonised inexperienced finance taxonomy impedes the tempo of transition to net-zero. Therefore, step one needs to be growing a reputable taxonomy. Taxonomy for agriculture ought to deal with numerous stakeholders’ coaching and capability wants, together with farmers and monetary establishments. Given the complexity and fixed evolution of the local weather financing system, shut coordination among the many numerous stakeholders is required. Adopting a taxonomy will present a transparent path for monetary establishments, thereby growing extra funding channels. In this regard, NABARD can play a number one function in growing rules and coordination. A strong framework would allow establishments to imagine a higher function in selling inexperienced investments.

Access to non-public capital

Attracting each personal capital is essential as public funds are restricted. Governments present finance by means of subsidies, grants and loans; nonetheless, attracting personal finance is difficult for agriculture. The capital market in India just isn’t mature and lacks a various buyers base. Currently, the inexperienced bond market is occupied by renewable power firms. India, in its finances, introduced issuing sovereign inexperienced bonds; the proceeds will be deployed for inexperienced infrastructure and capability constructing in agriculture.

Further, selling blended finance can be useful for agriculture because the personal sector is hesitant to enter since collateralisation of the underlying land is a political situation. However, the risk-return profile will be made enticing with blended finance mechanisms. There can be a necessity for aggregating micro-projects for reaching an acceptable ‘ticker’ measurement for procuring finance and to scale back the transaction price.

Prioritising small-scale farmers

India’s agricultural insurance policies needs to be refocused to encourage small-scale farmers to undertake sustainable practices. Small-scale farmers represent 78% and are on the frontline of the impacts of local weather change; they obtain a meagre fraction of the finance. According to an estimate, globally, small scale farmers obtain only one.7% of local weather finance. Ongoing tasks in Bangladesh, led by IFAD, present that monetary assist for climate-smart approaches instantly influence the native populations whereas constructing resilience. Therefore, India can envisage handholding farmers for mission designing capabilities. While these tasks will be inexperienced and remunerative, small-scale farmers don’t have the wherewithal to arrange a mission feasibility plan to acquire funds.

Higher R&D spending

Finally, India should encourage analysis and improvement within the meals and agriculture sector. While the nation plans to spend Rs. 1,45,339 crores on meals subsidy and Rs. 1,05,222 crores on fertiliser subsidy, projected spending on agricultural R&D stands flat at Rs. 8,513 crores in Budget 2022-23. Higher spending on R&D will make agriculture aggressive, environment friendly and sustainable. ICRIER means that the return on investment in agriculture R&D is round 5-10 occasions greater than the identical quantity spent on public spending. With coverage push, India will be technologically unbiased. This calls for elevated authorities assist for fundamental analysis in climate-resilient agriculture. 

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