Strengthening Climate Change Adaptation in Indian Agriculture: Policy Insights for Building Resilience

Abstract

India's agricultural sector is under pressure from changing climatic conditions, placing the livelihoods of millions of farmers at great risk. Protecting this sector from these risks is essential to ensuring food security, reducing poverty, and sustaining rural livelihoods. Adaptation is a crucial strategy for achieving these goals. Based on the literature, there is a priori expectation that farmers with favorable socio-economic characteristics (higher income, education, awareness, large farm size, etc.) and institutional support should respond to climate change through adaptation. This premise remains underexplored in the literature. With a view to fill this gap, we have studied three villages in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India: Gadhi Kalanjari, Siroli, and Dharipur. Research based on mixed methods, the Mann–Kendall test, and logistic regression analysis reveals that farmers with stronger socio-economic and institutional support often either do not adopt adaptation measures or do so primarily to sustain their income, with little concern for long-term sustainability. This is evident from the fact that only 13% of surveyed farmers reported adopting any measures to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. However, 97% of them acknowledged a decline in farm income due to extreme climate events. Furthermore, farmers with better market access are more likely to adapt, as the findings indicate that a 1% reduction in distance from the market increases the probability of adaptation by 11% points. Important suggestions for policy include improvement in extension, agromet services, community services; conducting evaluations of existing schemes in this sector to improve their effectiveness, and increasing investment in infrastructure.