The biggest concern of 21st century, which is terrifying the world, has been global warming. Green house effects due to emission of gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are having devastating implications on the climate. Surprisingly, Indian agriculture has been unknowingly committing the uncompromising mistake of methane and nitrous oxide emissions; and even has huge contributions towards global warming. Research done by Division of Environmental Sciences, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in 1994, New Delhi, India, stated that agriculture is responsible for 12.5% of greenhouse emissions globally; and just methane and nitrous-oxide have 15 and 5% contribution towards global warming. Main agricultural sources in the biological generation of methane have been the flooded rice fields and anaerobic animal waste processing. Shockingly in India, the agricultural sector itself produces a whopping 80% of methane created in the country; of which 23% is especially from paddy cultivated regions. Almost 65% of Indian farmers have been solely dependent on rice in terms of employment as well as feeding themselves. The rice-centric obsession has ensured that rice gets cultivated even in those regions where it is environmentally not suitable. It must be brought to notice here that the Indian Council of Agriculture Research, using complex spatially photographed data, had divided the country into 15 agro-climatic zones. The purpose here was to promote only those crops in particular environmentally sustainable regions. But almost nobody cared to follow the zone theory.
One example – much against the environment quotient, rice gets cultivated in the Ganganagar District of Rajasthan ably supported by the Indira Gandhi Canal. The effect – malaria, soil salinity and environmental destruction galore. Such examples are a dime a dozen; India needs to look within, or be doomed without.