Source: Kurukshethra Magazine
Key highlights
What are DACPs?
- The District Agricultural Contingency Plans (DACP) are technical documents aimed to be ready reckoner for line departments and farming community on prevailing farming systems and technological interventions to manage various weather aberrations such as droughts, floods, cyclones, hailstorms, heat and cold waves addressing different sectors of agriculture including horticulture, livestock, poultry, fisheries.
- The contingency plans are useful for preparedness and real-time implementation towards sustainable agricultural production systems in the events of weather aberrations and extreme climatic events.
- A standard template was developed in consultation with all stakeholders to cover prevailing agro-ecological situations in the district towards preparedness, possible in season contingencies and suggested adaptive strategies. The template consisting of two parts deal with
1.District agricultural profile of a district with information on resource endowments such as
- Rainfall, soil types, land use, irrigation sources, more dominant crops, and cropping systems along with their sowing windows
- Livestock, poultry and fisheries information
- Production and productivity statistics
- Major contingencies faced by the district and digital soil and rainfall maps and
2.The detailed strategies for weather-related contingencies anticipated in crops/cropping systems such as delay in onset of the monsoon of different duration; mid-season monsoon breaks resulting in drought both in rainfed and irrigated situations and adaptation strategies for weather-related extreme events
- These contingency plans contain information on alternate crop varieties/ crops to be chosen in case of delay in onset of monsoon or early season drought and also on agronomic measures for mid and terminal season droughts. Further, strategies for contingency situations in livestock, poultry, and fisheries have also been included.
Process of Pretion
- The district contingency plans were prepared by ICAR-CRIDA (nodal institute) along with other institutes of Natural Resource Management Division of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and State Agricultural Universities and KVKs under the overall guidance and supervision of ICAR and Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC)
- Five Regional orientation workshops were conducted to nodal officers of state agricultural universities to sensitize them about the standard template developed for the purpose during April to June 2010.
- Vetting workshops were organized since October 2010 in different states to scrutinize and finalize the plans in the presence of ICAR institutes and respective university authorities
Availability of Plans
The district-based contingency plans are prepared for more than 600 districts in the country and hosted on ICAR / DAC websites and circulated to all state agriculture departments.
