Assessing the Vulnerability of Farming Systems to Climate Change in Banda District of Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

The present study was undertaken by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Banda to assess the climatic vulnerability of Farming Systems to Climate Change in Chaudhary dera village of Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has introduced a network project titled National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) in the year 2011 to enhance the resilience of Indian agriculture to climatic vulnerability and climate change by strategic research and technology demonstration. In the year 2021-22, under NICRA project, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Banda was chosen to demonstrate the proven technologies of adapting crop and livestock farming systems to drought, which was one of the identified climatic vulnerability in the Banda District. Chaudhary Dera village of the district Banda was chosen under NICRA project. The Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) has three indicators approach to climate vulnerability (exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity), the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) was estimated using this approach. A total of 100 farmers were selected representing all the 4 farming system typologies (FST 1- Rainfed farming without animal, FST 2- Rainfed farming with animals, FST 3- Irrigated farming without animal and FST 4- Irrigated farming with animals) as per guidelines of NICRA project by using Proportionate Stratified Random Sampling method. The selected farmers of Chaudhery dera village were extremely susceptible to climate change and associated risk (CVI 0.70). Particularly, the vulnerability component indices revealed a high exposure (0.60) and sensitivity (0.52) of the farmers with the lowest adaptive capacity (0.42). The farming system wise results shows that FST-4 (Irrigated farming with animals) has lowest climatic vulnerability score (0.52) whereas FST-1 (Rainfed without animals) has highest climatic vulnerability score i.e. 0.83. Such findings indicate that climate smart adaptation strategies must be propagated at farm and regional levels by installing suitable, place-specific, and need based climate-adaptive technologies in four modules, which are the natural resource management, crop production, livestock, and institutional interventions.