OPINION | BRICS and farmers: Can the BRICS agricultural plan truly transform farming?

Agriculture is not new to the BRICS agenda. Its agriculture ministers first met in 2010, and cooperation has since extended across food security, research, technology and trade. What distinguishes the 2026 New Delhi Declaration is the sharper, more institutional and explicitly farmer-centred character of its commitments. By endorsing new platforms on seed rights, regenerative agriculture, digital technology and genetic resources, BRICS has sought to move from periodic dialogue towards practical agricultural transformation.

The four initiatives originated at the 16th BRICS Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting held in Indore in June and were subsequently endorsed by BRICS leaders in New Delhi. They comprise a Network of Centres of Excellence on Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture; a Network on Digital Agriculture; a Global Forum on Farmers’ Rights in Seed Systems; and BRICS AGRIN—the Agro-Inputs, Genetic Resources and Information Network. BRICS also reaffirmed its commitment to a fair, balanced and development-oriented agricultural trading system.

This is a promising architecture, but not yet a programme of transformation. BRICS countries differ widely in climate, farm size, land ownership, technology, markets and institutional capacity. Brazil’s large commercial farms, Russia’s extensive grain economy, China’s intensive cultivation, South Africa’s unequal agrarian structure and India’s predominantly small and fragmented holdings cannot be served by a uniform policy template.

BRICS cooperation should therefore broaden each country’s choices, without prescribing a single agricultural model. Science can be shared; solutions must be contextualised and adapted. A technology suited to a large mechanised farm may be uneconomic on a two-hectare holding. A water-intensive crop may be viable in one region and environmentally ruinous in another. Even within India, the agricultural realities of Punjab, Rajasthan, Assam and Kerala demand different responses. International cooperation acquires meaning only when it respects local ecology, institutions and farming knowledge.

The proposed Network of Centres of Excellence on Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture, initially coordinated by the ICAR–Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research at Modipuram, can promote collaborative work on soil health, water efficiency, biodiversity, biological inputs and climate-resilient cultivation. India can learn from other BRICS countries’ experience in conservation agriculture, dryland farming and ecological restoration, while contributing its own expertise in smallholder production across diverse agro-climatic regions.

This is particularly relevant to Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Their farmers helped secure India’s food sovereignty, but the production system that achieved it now confronts groundwater depletion, soil stress and diminishing crop diversity. The answer is neither to romanticise older methods nor to impose untested alternatives. Regenerative practices must be independently evaluated for their effects on productivity, costs, labour, risk and income. Farmers cannot be expected to bear privately the cost of an ecological transition undertaken for the public good. Transitional assistance, credible extension, insurance and dependable markets will be essential.

The Network on Digital Agriculture offers another important avenue. Artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, geospatial systems and digital public infrastructure can improve weather advisories, pest surveillance, irrigation, crop assessment, insurance settlement and market access. India’s Digital Agriculture Mission, AgriStack and decision-support systems provide an institutional foundation on which BRICS cooperation can build.

Technology, however, must remain the farmer’s servant. An advisory delivered in an unfamiliar language, based on inaccurate land records or divorced from local experience, may deepen exclusion. Tenants, sharecroppers and women cultivators are especially vulnerable to becoming invisible in digitally administered agriculture. Farmers must retain meaningful control over their data, supported by clear rules on consent, privacy, commercial use and accountability for faulty advice. A cultivator without a smartphone or formal title must not be denied the benefits of agricultural modernisation.

The Global Forum on Farmers’ Rights in Seed Systems may prove the most consequential initiative. Farmers have conserved, selected and exchanged seeds over generations. Their knowledge and genetic resources constitute an inheritance of immense economic and ecological value. India’s Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001, is internationally distinctive because it seeks to balance breeders’ interests with farmers’ rights to save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share and, subject to the law, sell farm produce including seed.

India need not build a new system from the ground up. The Seed Village Programme, or Beej Gram Yojana, has sought since 2014–15 to improve farmer-saved seed by supporting the local multiplication and distribution of quality seed and training cultivators in seed production. Its underlying principle deserves renewed attention: farmers should not remain merely consumers at the end of a commercial seed chain. They can also be producers, conservators and local suppliers of dependable seed.

The BRICS forum could strengthen this approach through participatory plant breeding, community seed banks, access to climate-resilient varieties, improved testing and storage, and exchanges among farming communities. Agricultural universities, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), cooperatives and farmer-producer organisations (FPOs) can connect international research with village-level seed systems. The purpose should not be to create another institutional layer, but to make existing institutions work together more effectively.

Safeguards will be indispensable. Documentation of traditional knowledge must not become its appropriation. Access to genetic material should rest on prior informed consent, traceability, recognition of community contributions, and equitable benefit-sharing. Farmers’ rights must be enforceable in practice—not reduced to ceremonial acknowledgements accompanying the commercial expansion of seed markets.

BRICS AGRIN can complement these efforts by promoting cooperation in agro-inputs, genetic resources and agricultural information. It could widen access to useful germplasm, biological inputs and technologies suited to drought, heat, salinity and emerging pests. Its collaborative and non-binding character preserves national regulatory autonomy. India must use that autonomy to safeguard biodiversity, biosafety and domestic research capacity while avoiding dependence on a narrow group of foreign technology or input suppliers.

There is also a wider economic opportunity. BRICS countries represent a substantial share of global agricultural production and consumption. Cooperation could expand markets for Indian rice, spices, tea, coffee, marine products, horticulture and processed foods. Collective engagement at the World Trade Organization could strengthen the case for rules that recognise public food-security programmes and the livelihood concerns of small and family farmers.

Yet, larger trade flows do not automatically produce greater farm prosperity. Without quality assurance, storage, logistics, traceability and processing capacity, the benefits may be captured mainly by intermediaries and large enterprises. Farmers require stable rules, protection against disruptive import surges, reliable market intelligence and a fair share of value—not merely higher export figures.

India should now convert the Delhi consensus into a time-bound national action framework. States, research institutions and farmers’ organisations must participate in its design. Pilot projects should be undertaken in contrasting agro-climatic regions and independently assessed for their effects on productivity, natural resources, resilience and farm incomes.

The New Delhi Declaration BRICS deepens and redirects cooperation in agriculture.  Its contribution will ultimately be measured not by the number of networks established, but by whether international knowledge produces locally appropriate solutions—and whether the farmer becomes more secure, more capable and better prepared for an uncertain future.

(Author is a former senior civil servant of the Punjab cadre (IAS, 1983 batch), and served in senior positions in the Government of Punjab, including as Additional Chief Secretary and Chief Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister.)

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.)