"The three pronged strategy of establishing crop-weather watch groups, demarcating most favourable areas for agriculture and developing effective relief and rehabilitation strategies will help agencies cut down on flood and drought sufferings," Swaminathan told PTI in an interview just before flash floods hit parts of eastern India.

He said the strategy which he had first floated during the 1979-80 monsoon failure as principal secretary of the union agriculture ministry, holds more importance today since climatologists have established links between erratic monsoons and the oceanic phenomenon El Nino off the Peru coast.

The first phase of the strategy advocates the establishment of crop-weather watch groups consisting of climatologists, farm scientists, representatives offarmer groups, government offices and financial institutions to monitor monsoon progression.

"The task groups need to develop contingency plans and alternative cropping strategies to suit different weather possibilities, building seed reserves of alternate crops and intensifying efforts in the area of water harvesting and minor irrigation," he said.

The aim is both to maximise beneficial impact of a good monsoon on agricultural productivity and minimise adverse impact of aberrant rainfall through efficient water saving use, crop life saving practices and contingency land use plans, Swaminathan said.

Demarcating most favourable areas (MFA) in each district for intensifying agricultural production through appropriate public policies and investment is equally important, he said, specially in areas of minor irrigation and water management.

Compensatory production programmes designed to offset possible crop losses in flood and drought affected areas should be taken up in the MFAs with more soil moistureretention capacity and better irrigation facilities, the crop expert said.

Also, strategies for effective relief and rehabilitation measures in areas most seriously affected by the natural calamities need to be chalked out, Swaminathan said.

"For instance, in chronically drought prone areas, earmarking community land for establishing cattle camps to save lives of farm animals and identifying aquifers which can be conserved as `ground water sanctuaries', could save a lot of the administrations' headaches when the calamity strikes," he said.

Swaminathan said the rural godown scheme to promote decentralised storage of harvested produce could also help prevent distress sales by farmers when harvest is good and panic purchase by consumers when crop losses are high.