The new El Nino event is underway and might be expected to intensify between July and September, raising fresh concerns about agricultural production worldwide. For India, where agriculture remains one of the country’s largest economic sectors and supports the livelihoods of millions, this is not merely a weather forecast; rather, it is a test of the nation’s food security and climate resilience.

History offers a sobering reminder: during warm ENSO phases, as suggested by researchers such as R. Selvaraju and co-authors, India’s rice production has declined by an average of 3.4 million tonnes, while drought conditions have disrupted yields across major crops.

Hence, I believe that India’s response to climate-driven agricultural stress must operate at two levels: the field, where water management determines crop survival, and the genome, where resilience is encoded. Israel, a country that has transformed arid landscapes into productive farmland, offers valuable lessons on both fronts.

The question is no longer whether India needs these lessons, but whether it is prepared to adopt them at the scale and speed that climate change demands.

Israel’s agricultural transformation began with a deceptively simple idea. In 1959, Simcha Blass and his son Yeshayahu developed drip irrigation, a system that delivers water directly to the plant’s root zone with minimal losses through evaporation or runoff. Today, drip irrigation covers roughly three-quarters of Israel’s irrigated farmland, enabling remarkable agricultural productivity despite severe water scarcity. The principle is simple: every drop of water should serve a purpose.

India has already begun benefiting from this innovation. Since entering the Indian market in the 1990s, Israeli company Netafim has helped farmers shift away from conventional flood irrigation, which wastes significant quantities of water. Precision irrigation systems have reduced water use by up to 50 per cent while increasing crop yields by 20 to 40 per cent. More importantly, over 40 Indo-Israeli Centres of Excellence across several states have become demonstration farms and knowledge hubs, training more than 3.6 lakh........

© The Statesman