EMISSIONS FROM PADDY CULTIVATION

EMISSIONS FROM PADDY CULTIVATION

TOPIC: Agriculture

Context- The Budget has announced chemical-free natural farming within a 5-km-wide corridor along the Ganga, support for millets, increased domestic production of oilseeds, kisan drones, etc.

Concept-

• Agriculture contributes 73% of country’s total methane emissions. India is not reporting nitrous oxide emissions in its national GHG inventories.
• As per the national GHG inventory, agriculture emits 408 million tonnes (mt) of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO2e), and rice cultivation is the third-largest source (at 17.5%) within Indian agriculture, after enteric fermentation (54.6%) and fertiliser use (19%).

RICE CULTIVATION:

• Paddy fields are anthropogenic sources of atmospheric nitrous oxide and methane which are 273 and 80-83 times more powerful than CO2 in driving temperature increase in 20 years, respectively.
• There is scientific evidence that intermittent flooding for rice reduces water and methane emissions, but increases nitrous oxide emissions.
• Second, there are emissions due to burning of rice residues, application of fertilisers, production of fertilisers for rice, energy operations like harvesting, pumps, processing, transportation, etc, which are not being accounted in GHG emissions by rice production.
• Furthermore, rice cultivation requires about 4,000 cubic metres of water per tonne.
• Economic Survey 2021-22 points out that India is over-exploiting its groundwater resources, particularly in its northwestern and southern reaches. This is primarily due to paddy cultivation on 44 million hectares.
• Paddy helped achieve food security, but now is the time to save groundwater and the environment by revisiting policies on subsidising power and fertilisers, MSP, procurement, switching from carbon-intensive crops such as rice to low carbon crops, or for improving farming practices in rice to lower GHG emissions.