Climate change impact is now visible on farms

NEW DELHI: Crops, plantations, even livestock in 151 districts, or slightly more than one-fifth of the total districts in India, are susceptible to the impact of climate change, according to an annual review by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), a wing of the agriculture ministry.

The effects of climate change on India’s agriculture, which employs half the population and accounts for 17% of the country’s economic output, are no longer about distant projections. The latest research, cited by the ICAR study, shows the impact of climate change will be increasingly felt , as demonstrated by extreme weather events -- and manifest itself in economic, political, even social consequences.

In Jharkhand’s Sahibganj district, rice-growing Maltos tribespeople are fending off new pests, attributed to changing temperature and rainfall patterns, according a 2016 study by researcher Hoinu Kipgen Lamtinhoi, who conducted the research for the Fellowship of India Commission on Relief.

The state’s Action Plan for Climate Change too flags these changes, said Lamtinhoi.

These changes are capable of stoking social conflicts. Lamtinhoi’s research shows that cropshriveling pests have led Maltos to move into areas dominated by Santhal tribes downhill, leading to clashes.

Apple belts in Himachal Pradesh have been moving to higher altitudes for want of sufficient cold weather, according to the ICAR.

Crop-damaging spring hailstorms in central India and a sudden temperature spike in Punjab in 2010 , which cut wheat yields by 26% that year, according to the Ludhiana-based Borlaug Institute, are other instances.

The ICAR has identified that of the 28 million hectares under wheat, about 9 million hectares are categorised as being prone to sudden heat stress.

“These are the evidence of changing of weather patterns in India,” said Pramod Aggarwal, one of India’s top climate scientists and a former national professor at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI).

Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh chaired a meeting on November 1 to review preparedness against extreme weather events.

Although there are several ongoing mitigation programmes, including the flagship National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture, these are scattered.

Singh has asked ICAR to prepare a new scheme that integrates all existing ones. At the meeting, he proposed tentatively calling it the “Integrated Climate Resilient Agriculture Programme”.