Context: India must balance food security with ecological sustainability by adopting climate-smart rice practices, and promoting pulses and oilseeds cultivation.
Relevance of the Topic: Mains: Rice Production in India and its ecological costs.
Rice Production in India
- India is emerging as the top rice producer in the world with over 140 million tonnes of annual production.
- With a buffer stock of 55-65 million tonnes and food security schemes reaching over 80 crore people, rice cultivation has played a vital role in alleviating extreme poverty (now estimated at 2.3% as per World Bank estimates based on HCES data).
Ecological Costs of cultivating Rice
However, this comes with a price: the ecological costs of cultivating paddy.
- Excessive Water Use: Rice is a water intensive crop. Producing 1 kg of rice requires over 3,500 litres of water. It depletes groundwater reserves, especially in Punjab, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.
- Virtual Water Export: India exported nearly 20 million tonnes of rice in FY25 (14 million non-basmati). This amounted to an export of large quantities of water (virtual water export) worsening India’s water stress.
- Energy-Water Paradox: Use of rice for making ethanol amounts to the ironical use of energy (pumping water out of the ground) and water to produce energy.
Sustainable Alternatives:
- Gene-edited Rice varieties: Gene-edited rice varieties are expected to produce 10 million tonnes more paddy on 5 million less hectares than at present. They use less water, mature early, and are drought-resistant. However, these seed varieties should be priced at affordable rates to small farmers.
- Indigenous Rice varieties: Indigenous varieties must be revived for their resilience to weather extremes as well as their nutritional value.
- Methods like Direct Seeded Rice (DSR) and System of Rice Intensification (SRI):
- Direct Seeded Rice eliminates the practice of transplanting seedlings from nurseries to fields. Instead, the seeds are sown directly in the field using drills or machines. They save up to 25% water, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependency on labour.
- System of Rice Intensification is a method of rice cultivation for increasing rice yield with reduced seed and water demand. SRI involves cultivating rice with as much organic manure as possible, starting with young seedlings planted singly at wider spacing in a square pattern; and with intermittent irrigation that keeps the soil moist but not inundated, and frequent inter-cultivation with a weeder that actively aerates the soil.
- Promote Crop Diversification: Entrenched status quo of systemic support for rice and wheat, at the expense of other crops must be disrupted. Increases in minimum support prices have proved ineffective to this end, in the absence of timely procurement of other crops. Oilseeds and pulses must be given top priority.
- ICAR must shift its focus from traditional Green Revolution methods to actively promoting climate-resilient, water-efficient rice varieties. Although some such strains have been developed, old varieties like Sona Masuri still dominate, highlighting the need for stronger institutional push.
Rice production in India needs an ecological and policy reset. With mounting environmental costs, India must embrace technological innovations, crop diversification, and institutional reforms to ensure climate-smart sustainable agriculture.