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Climate change is hitting closer to home than earlier expected. Agriculture production has seen a significant drop due to the effects of climate change such as increased temperature, floods and drought.
In a country struggling with rising population and the need to feed people ore every year, farm production is taking a big hit, according to Sanjoy Bandyopadhyay, Principal Scientist, Indian Agricultural Research Institute.
He was addressing a meet here on Friday on the ‘Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture’ organised by The Energy Research Institute (TERI).
He said that the production of wheat has dropped by six per cent, while rice and mustard production have narrowed by four per cent each.
Climate change has resulted in 70 per cent of India’s land becoming drought-prone, 12 per cent flood-prone, while eight per cent is affected by cyclones.
According to a study conducted by World Bank earlier this year, since almost 60 per cent of India’s crop area is rain-fed, change in precipitation would impact food production.
The study predicted that by 2050, a temperature increase of 2-2.5 degree Celsius is likely (compared to pre-industrialisation period), which would reduce the water availability for food production and 63 million people in India may not be able to meet their daily calorific requirement.
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