Rain dependence poses a key challenge to India's rural economy, said UN official Alvaro Lario on Thursday. While India reached self-sufficiency in many crops, water management remains a hurdle. Lario noted, "One of the biggest challenges that we have is the cost of a healthy diet," affecting many people today.
India has made significant gains in food production, even though water access and management remain major hurdles for the rural economy, where agriculture still relies heavily on seasonal rainfall, the president of a UN agency has said.
According to Alvaro Lario, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), India's ability to attain self-sufficiency in numerous crops has significantly strengthened its agricultural resilience.
"In the case of India, it has become self-sufficient in a lot of different crops, and I think that also makes it much more resilient. However, access to water and water management is a big issue, generally, because of the dependence on rain-fed agriculture," Lario told PTI in an interview on Thursday.
Rainfed agriculture accounts for nearly 60 per cent of India's net sown area and contributes approximately 40 per cent of the country's total food production, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
The cost of a healthy diet
While India has made significant gains in food production, Lario said ensuring food security also meant making nutritious food affordable and improving rural livelihoods.
"One of the biggest challenges that we have is the cost of a healthy diet," Lario said.
An estimated 40.4 per cent of India's population was unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Lario, who is on a visit to India from October 7 to 11 to strengthen ties with the government and rural development institutions, further said IFAD's nearly five-decade partnership with India has evolved alongside the country's development journey.
IFAD, a multilateral financial institution and a specialised agency of the United Nations, works towards reducing rural poverty and transforming food systems.
Investing to build resilience
The agency has invested nearly $1.5 billion across 37 projects in India and reached more than 6 million rural households, particularly women, tribal communities, and small-scale producers.
"Every dollar IFAD has invested in India has leveraged more than three dollars in total investment," Lario said, adding that IFAD and India are approaching the 50th anniversary of their partnership.
In May, IFAD launched a new eight-year country strategy for India, which aims to reach around 3 million rural households, or 13.2 million people.
The Country Strategic Opportunities Programme for 2026-2033 focuses on building the resilience of rural communities to climate and economic shocks and taking successful models to scale in India and other developing countries.
"The result is that they earn more, and that a failed monsoon or a price shock no longer pushes them back into poverty," Lario said.
Climate vulnerability
Lario said IFAD's work in India was increasingly focused on regions vulnerable to climate change. "Our priority is the Northeastern region and the Himalayan states," he said.
He will be in Meghalaya on Friday to visit the Meghalaya Livelihoods and Access to Markets Project, a rural development initiative launched in 2014 by the state government in partnership with IFAD.
As part of its support for rural livelihoods in the Northeast, IFAD made a catalytic investment of ₹2 crore (around $200,000) in an organic spice processing facility in Meghalaya.
In June, India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurated the facility, the first and largest of its kind in the Northeast, which has an annual processing capacity of more than 10,000 metric tonnes and works with around 5,500 farmers.