Global warming to impact grain production

Agriculture will suffer substantial economic losses due to global warming with the gross domestic product of this sector in the world projected to drop by 16 per cent in the next 13 years. Significantly, even technology may not help to forestall these losses in totality.

The worst affected will be the developing countries of South Asia, including India and Africa where the crop outputs will plummet much deeper than in the developed countries.

This has been revealed in the bi-annual overview of the world food situation released last week by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

It reckons that the agriculture output in developing countries is likely to decline by whopping 20 per cent by 2020, against only 6 per cent fall in industrialised nations. The world agricultural gross domestic product as a whole will decrease by 16 per cent by 2020 due to global warming.

Indicating that the global foodgrain prices, too, may be impacted by the climate change, the report points out that more than 3 degrees Celsius increase in temperature can trigger up to 40 per cent rise in food prices. This will put food and nutritional security at risk, especially for the poor people.

"With every 1 per cent increase in the price of food, the food consumption expenditure in developing countries decreases by 0.75 per cent. Faced with higher prices, the poor switch to foods that have lower nutritional value and lack important micronutrients," the report concludes.

Besides, the adverse impact of the climate change risks on food production will compound the challenge of meeting global food demand. Consequently, food import dependence is projected to rise in many regions of the developing world, the report adds.

It also maintains that the crop yield losses are imminent due to anticipated increased risk of droughts and floods as a result of rise in temperature.

Though, in the long run (between 1990 and 2080), the aggregate impact on cereals may be small "" a decrease in production of less than 1 per cent "" but large reductions of up to 22 per cent are likely in South Asia, which includes India. In contrast, developed countries and Latin America are expected to experience absolute gains.

The report points out that the impact on cereals output may differ for different crops. "Projections show that land suitable for wheat production may disappear in Africa," it says. In many parts of the developing world, especially in Africa, arid lands may expand by up to 8 per cent.

Sounding a caution, the report categorically states: "Technological change is not expected to be able to alleviate output losses and increase yields to a rate that would keep up with growing food demand."

The need to guard farmers against the menace of global warming will boost the demand for innovative insurance mechanisms, such as rainfall-indexed insurance schemes, covering risk-prone regions and communities of small farmers. This is a new area for the institutions to explore, the report indicates.