Climate-resilient agriculture: Why India’s farms must adapt faster to climate stress

Climate change is no longer a distant risk for Indian agriculture. Erratic monsoons, frequent heatwaves, declining soil health and rising air pollution are already reshaping how food is produced. With domestic food demand rising steadily, the challenge is not only to grow more, but to grow smarter and more sustainably. This is where climate-resilient agriculture (CRA) becomes central to India’s food security debate.

What does climate-resilient agriculture actually mean?

Climate-resilient agriculture refers to farming systems that can absorb climate shocks, adapt to long-term environmental changes, and continue to deliver stable yields. Rather than relying heavily on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, CRA combines biotechnology with complementary tools that work with natural processes.

These include biofertilisers and biopesticides that strengthen soil biology, soil-microbiome analyses to guide nutrient management, and crop varieties bred or genome-edited to tolerate drought, heat, salinity and pest pressure. Alongside this, artificial intelligence and data-driven analytics integrate weather, soil and crop data to generate location-specific advisories for farmers. The idea is to reduce vulnerability while maintaining — or even improving — productivity.

Why climate resilience has become critical for Indian farming

India’s dependence on climate-sensitive agriculture makes it especially exposed to weather uncertainty. About 51% of the country’s net sown area is rainfed, yet this land contributes nearly 40% of total food production. Even minor shifts in rainfall timing or temperature can therefore have outsized impacts on output and farm incomes.

Conventional farming practices, which often depend on uniform input use and predictable seasons, are proving inadequate under these conditions. Climate-resilient approaches offer tools to buffer farms against variability, helping stabilise yields while reducing environmental damage such as soil degradation and groundwater depletion.

How India has approached climate-resilient agriculture so far

India’s policy engagement with CRA is not new. In 2011, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research launched the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) network project. Under this programme, location-specific practices — such as system of rice intensification, direct-seeded rice, zero-tillage wheat, residue incorporation and climate-tolerant crop varieties — were demonstrated across 448 climate-resilient villages.

The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture further embedded resilience into policy, with a focus on rainfed areas, water-use efficiency, soil health management and integrated farming systems. More recently, the BioE3 policy has identified climate-resilient agriculture as a priority area for biotechnology-led solutions, signalling a stronger push towards innovation-driven adaptation.

The role of biotechnology and digital tools on the ground

Several CRA-related technologies are already moving beyond pilot stages. Indian companies now supply bio-inputs that improve nutrient availability and reduce dependence on synthetic chemicals. At the same time, the digital agriculture ecosystem has expanded rapidly, with agritech startups offering AI-enabled advisories, precision irrigation tools, crop-health monitoring and yield prediction services.

Genome editing holds particular promise, allowing the development of crop varieties tailored to India’s diverse agro-climatic conditions without lengthy breeding cycles. However, adoption remains uneven, and access to these tools is still limited for many small and marginal farmers.

What is holding back large-scale adoption?

Despite policy intent, scaling climate-resilient agriculture faces several bottlenecks. Small landholders often lack awareness, affordability and access to new technologies, slowing uptake. Quality inconsistencies in biofertilisers and biopesticides have also eroded trust in biological alternatives among farmers.

The rollout of climate-resilient seeds has been gradual, while newer tools such as gene editing are still emerging within regulatory and institutional frameworks. A persistent digital divide limits the reach of AI-based advisories, especially in remote regions. These challenges are compounded by accelerating soil degradation, water stress and climate volatility that may outpace current adaptation efforts, alongside fragmented policy coordination across sectors.

What India needs to do next

The way forward lies in moving from isolated interventions to a coherent national strategy. Accelerating the development and approval of climate-tolerant and genome-edited crops is crucial, as is strengthening quality standards and supply chains for biofertilisers and biopesticides. Expanding access to digital tools and climate advisories can help small farmers make informed decisions in real time.

Equally important are financial incentives, climate insurance and easier credit to support farmers during the transition to new practices. Above all, India needs a unified climate-resilient agriculture roadmap under the BioE3 framework — one that aligns biotechnology, digital innovation and climate adaptation policies to deliver resilience at scale, before climate stress overwhelms existing farming systems.