Chapter-09: Climate Smart Agriculture and Digital Innovations: Transforming Sustainable Agriculture for a Resilient Future

Climate change, environmental degradation, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and the growing demand of food by an increasingly populated global population are all contributing to the most critical change in human history; agriculture. Agricultural sector is not only a victim of climate change but also a contributor to climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, including land use, livestock, and other activities, is attributed to agriculture. Meanwhile, between 1991 and 2021, which equates to nearly US$ 123 billion per year, climate-related disasters, including droughts, floods, cyclones, heat waves, and pest outbreaks caused an estimated global agricultural loss of US$ 3.8 trillion between 1991 and 2021.

These issues have rendered Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) a worldwide focus in the quest to attain food security, sustainability, and climate resilience. The pillars of Climate Smart Agriculture are grounded on three major pillars, namely: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and income, strengthening adaptation and resilience to climate change, and reducing or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions wherever possible. At the same time, digital innovations (Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), precision agriculture, remote sensing, drones, block chain, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), machine learning, robotics, and digital extension services) are changing the agricultural scene by allowing the use of data-driven and efficient farming practices. India is highly vulnerable to monsoon dependency, the fractured landholdings, the dwindling groundwater reserves, and the increased climate uncertainty. The government efforts in the form of the Digital Agriculture Mission, PM-KUSUM, National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), and the Soil Health Card Scheme are driving the adoption of climate-sensitive and technology-based agriculture.

In this paper, the author discusses how Climate Smart Agriculture and digital innovations can be integrated as a sustainable agricultural transformation pathway. The research is founded on the secondary data gathered by FAO, IPCC, World Bank, World Economic Forum, IFPRI, ICAR, and recent Scopus-indexed journals. The results indicate that digital technologies can substantially enhance the efficiency of irrigation, pest control, weather prediction, yield forecasting, reduction of the carbon footprint, and profitability in the farm. Nonetheless, various policies like digital inequality, lack of connectivity in rural areas, low digital literacy, and high costs of technology, fragmented policy frameworks, and weak institutional support are still limiting widespread adoption, especially among smallholder farmers.