Plug These Existing Policy Inefficiencies and Contradictions Before Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation Into Agriculture

As more countries are trying to strengthen their agriculture sectors to address climate change concerns, they must not take their sight off strengthening the traditional agricultural policies that are necessary to achieve the overall sustainability of agriculture. This is because the reason that adaptation policies and actions are often implemented in the presence and influence of the larger agricultural policy environment and they are not isolated from its influence. Hence, mainstreaming climate change adaptation into agricultural sector planning must take into consideration the larger agricultural policy environment that may skew the outcomes of adaptation efforts by working against the intended outcomes of adaptation due to the possible counter-balancing effects of existing agricultural policies.

One such agricultural policy is the subsidies that may enhance resource use and result in greater GHG emissions. Studies have indicated that agricultural subsidies can have unsustainable outcomes including resource use such as electricity, water and fertilizers and could put an undue burden on the national governments both in terms of finances as well as in terms of lost opportunity to invest these precious national financial resources in otherwise sustainable and long-term agricultural policy reforms and capacity strengthening. Instead, countries need to restructure subsidies to result in behavioural change in farmers so that they can take prudent production choices. Wherever necessary, these subsidies may be targeted in such a way that only the neediest are benefited from subsidies resulting in greater social and environmental benefits.

In addition, efforts are needed to buffer shocks to agriculture from weather vagaries. Traditionally, the shocks have been buffered through social security programs, and through establishing reliable irrigation and flood control systems and promoting flood and drought- tolerant agricultural production systems. However, with the increasingly volatile weather and climate conditions, these measures are becoming insufficient and gains in the adoption rate of new technologies are hard to come by. Measures such as agricultural insurance are being advocated to spread the risk and to provide farmers with loss compensation that can buffer shocks on their income and livelihoods. However, the growth in agricultural insurance in Asia is not reaching its potential due to the intrinsic limitations of insurance policies such as heavy subsidies not conveying the cost of risk-taking to the farmers. There is also a need to expand the weather index insurance programs, as opposed to indemnity-based insurance programs, that can help address issues such as adverse selection and moral hazard. There is also a need to strengthen the weather, climate and crop production data that is necessary for developing a reliable index. Innovations such as combining payment of ecosystem services (PES) with crop insurance premiums, savings-linked insurance programs and linking social security programs with insurance programs have been advocated but their real efficacy is not yet evaluated and publicized widely.

Making agriculture a viable income option for farmers is at the forefront of the policy goals of many countries in Asia. Carbon sequestration in tropical soils can provide a limited but important income opportunity, especially in a high carbon price market regime and this could be an important income source that farmers could either invest in insurance premiums or in strengthening agricultural production practices.

In addition to the production side policy environment, governments also need to address the demand side of the food where shaping consumer choices through appropriate information tools such as labelling and certifications is necessary. The current bottleneck with these approaches is the cost of implementing them, technological innovations are necessary to reduce their cost and increase adoption rate.

Agriculture is becoming an increasingly energy-intensive practice with mechanization and dwindling human labour. Several countries in Asia have subsidized energy prices for agricultural use to reduce the burden on farmers and to keep a check on a possible rise in food prices. However, countries are increasingly realizing that the market is ripe for the employment of renewable energy such as photovoltaics in agriculture in a high GHG mitigation policy environment driven by Net Zero goals. Governments are increasingly promoting agro- photovoltaics (or agrivoltaics) that can provide gainful energy and income generation opportunities for farmers with land to spare or able to effectively integrate PV in their crop production choices without substantial reduction in agricultural production potential. In this regard, the government of Japan’s policies seem to encourage farmers to rapidly take up agrivoltaics, especially when the country’s agricultural population is ageing, and agricultural income is declining in an increasingly globalized agricultural market.