The scheme aims to enhance resilience of farming to climate change and climate variability through strategic research and technology demonstration. Planned adaptation is essential to increase the resilience of farming to climate change. Some practices that help adapt to climate change in farming are soil organic carbon build up, in-situ moisture conservation, residue incorporation instead of burning, water harvesting and recycling for supplemental irrigation, growing drought and flood tolerant varieties, water saving technologies, location specific farming and nutrient management etc. Building resilience in soil health is the key property that determines the resilience of crop production under changing climate. To adapt to climate change, farmers need to adapt quickly to enhance their resilience to increasing threats of climatic variability such as droughts, floods and other extreme climatic events. Adoption of such resilient practices and technologies by farmers appears to be more a necessity than an option. Participatory on-farm demonstration of site-specific technologies will go a long way in enabling farmers cope with current climate variability. Strategic research on adaption to progressive climate change covers crops, livestock, fisheries and natural resource management. The project can be implemented in one representative Grama Panchayath in each district selected based on major climatic vulnerability viz. drought, floods etc.
The main objectives are;
- Dissemination and utilization of weather forecast products to local level.
- Integrated Water Resource Management including rainwater harvesting and other novel irrigation techniques.
- Adaptive cropping system for extreme weather condition including agriculture hot spots.
- Long term microclimatic database repository creation and dissemination
- To sustainable livestock and fisheries.
- Building soil resilience through improved soil management techniques
- Incentives for preserving the gene pool of climate resilient cultivars