Is agricultural sector an victim of climate change? What are the impacts of climate change in agriculture? Cam our agricultural practices be modified to cope with climate change? Being an agricultural student this questions holds a great importance to us. And so it does to you as every mouth of our earth is directly related to agriculture. So to solve my curiosity I participated on a one day seminar held on December 1 by Youth for Agri-welfare on IAAS, Lamjung. The topic of the workshop was "Climate Change and Agriculture: Impacts and Mitigation".

This seminar enforced a direct interaction between government heads, farmers, agricultural professors and students. A huge opportunity of understanding the perspective of climate change of diversified group of people was provided to us. Heated discussions on "how farmers of developing countries are being irresponsible about climate change issues", "what has the government done to act against climate change impacts on agriculture" and "Are the agricultural students and professors playing adequate role to protect agriculture from climate change" were seen. Everyone worked together to develop a common propaganda clarifying the cause, impacts and mitigations of climate change. 

Firstly agri-professors clarified the farmers about how their acts are increasing climate change. They focused on the major cause of GHG emissions like methane emission from flooding rice cultivation, GHG emission from improper use of fertilizers and pesticide, huge methane emissions from manures, excessive tillage causing loss of soil carbon to atmosphere, use of unsuitable crop varieties, burning of crop residues, improper irrigation and others. They also suggested about ways to reduce such emissions like SRI system of rice cultivation, use of drought tolerant and modern varieties, controlled use of fertilizers, preparation of manure from agri- waste, minimum tillage and others. 

Similarly the Chief district agricultural officer illustrated different acts of government to mitigate climate change. Some of them were promotion of Slopping agricultural land technology(SALT), water harvesting technology, researches about developing climate change tolerant varieties, promoting awareness about use of proper amount of fertilizers, taxation on industries causing adverse impact on environment, ban on pesticides causing excessive effect to environment. Similarly the government has been a part of various international agreement like Paris agreement, COP and others and have been implementing them. One of the most impressive act was the governmental meeting at the base of Mount Everest( kalapathar) on December4,2009 to the whole world about the effects of climate change on out mountains. 

Lasltly a cmbined workshop was done between agri-students and farmers to examine the effects of climate change and find ways to mitigate them. The farmers complained about the difficulties they have been facing due to climate change like change in the pattern of rainfall, wind and temperature, higher infestation of crops by pest, early maturity of crops, higher infestation of weeds, higher need of fertilizer application, increase in labor but decreased productivity. A combined effort was done to find ways to mitigate these effects like use of tolerant varieties, minimum tillage, water harvesting technology, carbon sequestration, afforestation, compost preparation, etc.

Overall this workshop proved to be of great benefits. The impacts of climate change on agriculture was well interpreted and ways to mitigate them were found.