A recent NCAER study shows that irrigation helps farmers build climate resilience. The research covered 57 projects across 20 States, involving 10,000 households. It found that 68 per cent of households in command areas got higher incomes. However, experts said irrigation must be complemented with better soil management and cropping practices.
Irrigation must be complemented with better soil management and cropping practices
Climate change is no longer an abstract environmental concern for Indian agriculture. Farmers are already dealing with rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, intense rain, floods, droughts, water stress and changing pest patterns. The question is no longer whether Indian agriculture needs to adapt, but how it can become resilient enough to withstand these shocks while protecting the natural resources on which farming depends.
India has responded with a wide range of programmes covering irrigation, micro-irrigation, crop insurance, climate-resilient seeds, weather advisories, soil management and digital agriculture. But the real test of these interventions is not simply how much money is spent or how many farmers are covered. It is whether farmers are better able to absorb a climate shock, recover from it and sustain their livelihoods.
NCAER study
Recent evidence from an NCAER study of major irrigation projects (https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:AP:b68e796d-981d-4763-92c5-f8a7196b7fde) offers an important perspective. The study covered 57 irrigation projects across 20 States, nearly 600 villages and about 10,000 households. It compared households in command areas receiving benefits from canal irrigation with those outside these areas.
The findings suggest that irrigation can make an important contribution to climate resilience. About 68 per cent of households in command areas reported higher agricultural productivity and incomes, while 67 per cent of households in non-command areas reported stagnation or decline. About 76 per cent of command-area households also reported improved access to input and output markets.
The benefits extended beyond farming. Irrigation was associated with the growth of agri-service enterprises, dairies, repair shops and other local economic activities. Migration also appeared to be lower in command areas: 34 per cent of command-area households reported increasing migration, compared with 46 per cent in non-command areas. New business and service opportunities were reported by 30.2 per cent of command households, compared with 17.4 per cent in non-command households.
These findings matter because climate resilience is not simply about producing more. It is also about maintaining income and livelihoods when conditions become uncertain.
In this sense, irrigation is not merely agricultural infrastructure. It can become climate infrastructure by reducing farmers' dependence on uncertain rainfall, improving water reliability and making agricultural production more predictable.
Environmental impact
The environmental evidence from the study reinforces this argument. About 43.9 per cent of respondents in command areas reported improved soil quality, compared with only 5.5 per cent in non-command areas. In non-command areas, 54.5 per cent reported deterioration in soil quality. Reported improvements in groundwater levels and vegetation cover were also higher in command areas.
The study also provides evidence that command areas have greater adoption of practices intended to strengthen agricultural resilience. About 58.7 per cent of command-area households reported adopting resilient farming practices, compared with 51.1 per cent in non-command areas. For climate-smart agricultural practices, the corresponding figures were 49.4 per cent and 43.6 per cent.
These terms overlap but are not identical. Resilient farming practices broadly refer to practices that help farms withstand and recover from shocks such as drought, floods or rainfall variability. Climate-smart agricultural practices have a broader objective: improving productivity and incomes while adapting to climate change and, where possible, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Better water and soil management, crop diversification and climate-resilient varieties can contribute to both.
This distinction is important because irrigation can enable climate resilience without automatically making the entire farming system climate-smart.
Access to reliable water creates the conditions for farmers to diversify crops, adopt improved technologies, manage soil better and reduce their dependence on rainfall. But whether these benefits materialise depends on what farmers do with that additional water and how the resource is managed.
The groundwater evidence illustrates the point. In the Karjan project in Gujarat, only 2 per cent of command-area respondents reported groundwater decline, compared with 70 per cent in non-command areas. In Tungabhadra in Andhra Pradesh, the corresponding figures were 6 per cent and 65 per cent. Yet in the Sakri Lower Valley project in Bihar, groundwater stress was high in both command and non-command areas.
This does not negate the positive role of irrigation. Rather, it highlights a basic principle: the long-term value of irrigation depends on the sustainability of the water system supporting it.
An irrigation project can improve water availability, agricultural productivity, soil conditions and farm incomes. But if greater water availability subsequently encourages excessive groundwater extraction or unsustainable cropping patterns, some of those gains could eventually be weakened.
The same logic applies to other climate interventions. Climate-resilient seeds should be assessed not simply by their adoption, but by whether they maintain yields and farm incomes under climate stress. Crop insurance should be assessed not merely by the number of policies issued, but by how quickly farmers receive compensation and resume cultivation after a shock. Weather advisories should be judged by whether they influence decisions on sowing, irrigation, harvesting or marketing.
Policy focus
The policy focus therefore needs to shift from scheme coverage to measurable resilience.
For irrigation, this means tracking water productivity, groundwater conditions, soil health and farm-income stability alongside the expansion of irrigated area. For climate-resilient seeds, both adoption and performance under stress should matter. For crop insurance, claim settlement and post-shock recovery should be part of the assessment. For digital advisories, the relevant question is whether farmers actually change decisions in response to the information.
There is also a second challenge. Agriculture must adapt to climate change while reducing its own environmental footprint. India's Fourth Biennial Update Report estimates that agriculture accounted for 13.72 per cent of the country's greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020. This makes it important to promote practices that can deliver both adaptation and mitigation benefits -- efficient water and fertiliser use, better soil management, appropriate crop diversification and improved livestock practices.
The objective, therefore, should not be to create another layer of climate schemes. India already has programmes addressing different parts of the problem. The greater need is to connect them around a common outcome: a farm that is economically productive, financially secure and able to withstand climate shocks without undermining its natural-resource base.
The experience of irrigation provides an important lesson. Irrigation is an important component of climate-resilient and potentially climate-smart agriculture. But its full value emerges when reliable water is combined with better soil management, appropriate cropping practices, resilient technologies and sound resource management.
India therefore needs to move from thinking about climate adaptation as a collection of schemes to seeing it as a system of resilience.
The central question should be simple: Are Indian farmers becoming better able to withstand, recover from and adapt to climate shocks?
That is ultimately the measure by which climate-resilient agriculture should be judged.