Climatic Variations and Cereal Production in India: An Empirical Analysis

The study is an attempt to forecast the impact of climate variations on the production of two main cereal crops, i.e., wheat and paddy, by employing a crop model using cross-section data for the year 2014-2015. The findings predict that the yield of the wheat crop is expected to go down in the farms in the plains by 10.11 per cent, while set to increase in the farms in the hills by 6.70 per cent, respectively by 2100 AD. The results, further pinpoint that the production of paddy crop is expected to decline in both farms in the plains and farms at hills by 15.04 percent and 12.83 per cent respectively for farms in the plains and farms in the hills by the turn of this century. The study recommends the expansion of area under wheat cultivation for the farms in the hills in order to compensate the loss in production of wheat farming in farms in the plains to maintain the aggregate production of wheat at the same level. There found a dire need for the development and adoption of climate responsive varieties of both crops along with the spatial diversification of crops (full or partial), to cope with the future shocks of climate variability.