Climate change will hit wheat, rubber production in India

Chennai:

Climate change will affect India’s wheat production with around 50 per cent of the high potential wheat production area may be reclassified as heat-stressed, lower potential, short-season growing environment by 2050, according top noted scientist M S Swaminathan.

Delivering the inaugural address of the International Consultation on 20-years of Rio: Biodiversity-Development-Livelihoods’, the chairman of M S Swaminathan Research Foundation said that it is estimated that for each one degree Celsius rise in mean temperature, wheat yield losses in India are likely to be around six million tonnes per year or around $1.3 billion at current prices.

He also said the rise in temperatures will also affect rubber yield in Kerala and India is looking at North east areas for producing rubber.

Highlighting growth rates of yield of major cereals slowing in developing countries, Swaminathan said scientists across the world are working to reverse the fatigue of green revolution.

He said unsustainable consumption of natural resources has resulted in expanding ecological footprint than the biocapacity causing a threat to food security.

Linking the rise in food prices to rise in fuel prices, he said the demand has increased more than the supply with nearly 900 million people going to bed without food and there is a need to bring the figure to 400 million by 2015 to achieve UN Millennium Development Goals.

He also highlighted various policy options in national agenda to address price volatility which include enlarging the food basket to include under-utilised crops, introducing a lifecycle approach to nutrition safety net programmes with special emphasis on the thousand days in a child’s life and fostering community grains market.

He also said the proposed food security bill will also include underutilized crops like core cereals to nutri-millets. The special features of the bill include adoption of life cycle approach with special attention to the first 1,000 days in a child’s life, enlarged food basket with considering women as head of the household with regard to food entitlements.