Climate Change hits Agriculture in India

Climate-Change-Climate change has begun to show its adverse effects much earlier than thought. Agricultural production has sought a significant decline attributable to climate change. Increased temperatures, floods and drought are the best examples one could think of when it comes to adverse impacts of climate change.

Climate change is to blame for making country's 70% of land drought-prone. Not only this, it has made the country's land 12% flood prone and eight percent more likely to be affected by cyclones.

The country is already struggling to cope with rising population and the need to feed more every year. This has put farm production under immense pressure, and adverse effects of climate change will make it worse to an extent that the whole country will faced the heat, said Sanjoy Bandyopadhyay, Principal Scientist, Indian Agricultural Research Institute.

He said that wheat production has gone down by six percent. Rice and mustard production, on the other hand, has gone down to four percent each.

He was speaking during a meet on Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture. The meeting was organized by The Energy Research Institute on Friday.

He said that there is a significant need to understand the importance of adopting stress (heat)-tolerant and water-logging-tolerant varieties of crops. Moreover, crop diversification is required and the government needs to encourage community seed banks and farmer to farmer seed exchanges.