Climate crisis hurts food security in India

Among the many effects of the climate crisis that became evident in 2022, the impact on India’s food security was among the most significant. Some more proof of this came this week via a study by the National Dairy Research Institute. Researchers found that increasing spells of the summer heatwaves are hurting milk productivity, or output per cattle, while raising costs of production for farmers. Milk productivity in the world’s largest producer has also been on a decreasing trend during summers due to heat stress, the recent study found. The study found that each unit increase in the temperature humidity index above a “critical level” reduces the fortnightly milk productivity of dairy animals by 0.42-0.67% in northern Indian plains. More animals fell sick due to extreme temperatures and dairy farmers had to buy cooling equipment, raising the cost of milk production by up to 12% (2021 Indian Council of Agriculture Research paper).

This has been a rough year for the dairy industry, which also dealt with an outbreak of the lumpy skin disease which killed around 100,000 cows and buffaloes between April and September. Worse, this adversely affected small cultivators, whose marginal earnings from agriculture are often supplemented by incomes from milch cattle.

The experience of 2022 — spring heatwaves shrivelling the wheat crop and uneven rainfall affecting rice yields — underlines the need for more climate sensitive policies and better undergirding of agricultural processes to deal with vagaries in weather patterns. Even more urgently required is a prediction and forecast system because it can help deal with climate shocks. The importance of strategic food reserves and buffer stocks are only likely to grow in the coming years.