Dr Gurbachan Singh, Chairman, Agricultural Scientists' Recruitment Board (ASRB), has cautioned that climatic changes taking place due to global warming pose a threat to sustainable agriculture.

He was addressing the inaugural session of a national seminar on “Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: Challenges in Changing Climate” organised here yesterday by the Directorate of Research, Haryana Agricultural University, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, and the Central Research Institute for Dry Land Agriculture (CRIDA).

He said agriculture was already facing problems, including those of dwindling land holdings, decline in the fertility status of soils and uncertain rainfall. He said the younger generation was reluctant to take up farming as a profession and the small and marginal farmers were also drifting away from it as agriculture was no longer profitable.

He urged farm scientists to consider climate changes as an opportunity rather than a challenge and develop technology capable of increasing agricultural production as well as income of the farmers. They should evolve crop varieties resistant to heat, cold and submergence. He also stressed on development of waste lands by conservation agriculture, farm mechanisation, rain water harvesting and popularisation of integrated nutrient management in soils.

He said that multi-disciplinary, problem-oriented and farmer-participatory research approach would help in achieving our goal of sustainable agriculture production.

The Vice-Chancellor, Dr KS Khokhar, said that India's population was expected to cross 1.50 billion mark by 2020 and we would need to produce 40-50 MT more foodgrains than the present level of 244 MT to feed this population.

He said predictions had been made that the crop production would decline due to rise in temperature. But we should not ignore the fact that research to mitigate this problem had already begun. He said after Independence, the major need was to attain self-sufficiency in foodgrains production and scientists had ushered in the Green Revolution in the country.

He said scientists understood the implications of global warming and the government was also very serious on this issue.