World Grain - January 2023 - 42

FEATURE: INDIA IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
the performance of agriculture and allied rural sectors.
The success of ongoing massive rural-urban transformation
also will depend on improved connectivity of
rural areas to cities, enhanced agriculture productivity
and value chains for agricultural products and off-farm
job creation in rural areas, which would temper down
current massive migrations to urban areas. The agriculture
sector also has a major potential for reducing GHG
emissions and improving environmental management
through enhanced soil and water conservation and climate-resilient
farm management practices.
Wheat and rice output threatened
Over the past two decades, the agriculture sector has
performed below its potential and has not yet met the
envisaged growth targets. In the 1990s and 2000s, the
annual agriculture growth rate was around 3% to 3.5%,
and dropped even below 2% per annum during 201315,
due to low productivity, growing water and land
scarcity, rising labor costs, and declining international
commodity prices, exacerbated by the late onset of
monsoon rainfall and increased rainfall intensity.
India is the world's second largest wheat producer and
also ranks second in annual rice output. Scientists and
researchers project that a 2.5° to 4.9°C increase in temperature
across the country could lead to a decrease of
41% to 52% in the wheat yield, and 32% to 40% in rice.
While overall rainfall is projected to increase, its distribution
over time and space is likely to become much more
erratic, thereby leading to increasingly frequent droughts
and floods. Unless significant efforts to capitalize on the
projected increase in rainfall are made to improve water
conservation and soil moisture management, water scarcity
at the farm level will remain a key impediment to
achieving higher levels of crop and water productivity.
Going forward, five inter-related and strategic shifts
are required to achieve the 4% annual growth target set
by the national government for agriculture and transform
the sector into a modern food system:
* a shift away from food grain production targets
toward diversification into high-value horticulture
and livestock products;
* a shift away from pure focus on physical productivity
(yields) toward resilience and stability
of agriculture to deal with the effects of climate
change and short-term weather anomalies;
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World Grain - January 2023

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