Sensitivity of wheat yields to rise in growing season temperature: Evidences from panel data analysis

K Philip K Philip,G.k Jha G.K Jha,J Kumari J Kumari,A Ali A Ali,S.s Asha Devi S.S Asha Devi,B.m.k Raju B.M.K Raju,B Sen B Sen

doi:10.54386/jam.v22i2.167

Abstract

 The impact of climate change on agriculture is well studied yet there is scope for improvement as crop specific and location specific impacts need to be assessed realistically to frame adaptation and mitigation strategies to lessen the adverse effects of climate change. Many researchers have tried to estimate potential impact of climate change on wheat yields using indirect crop simulation modeling techniques. Here, this study estimated the potential impact of climate change on wheat yields using a crop specific panel data set from 1981 to 2010,for six major wheat producing states. The study revealed that 1°C increase in average maximum temperature during the growing season reduces wheat yield by 3 percent. Major share of wheat growth and yield (79%) is attributed to increase in usage of physical inputs specifically fertilizers, machine labour and human labour. The estimated impact was lesser than previously reported studies due to the inclusion of wide range of short-term adaptation strategies to climate change. The results reiterate the necessity of including confluent factors like physical inputs while investigating the impact of climate factors on crop yields.

Highlights

Indian agriculture showed an impressive growth over last decades that made the countryself-sufficient in terms of food grain production.ensuring food security for the burgeoning population using depleting resource base under the risks of climate change is a challenge for a country like India where 52 % of the net sown area is still unirrigated and rainfed
Panel data regression models have been used to assess the potential impact of climate change as they account for onfarm adaptation to climate change and arenot subjected to omitted variable bias (Blanc and Schelkner, 2017)
The results revealed that machine labour, human labour and fertilizer application are positively related to wheat yields and their effects were found to be statistically significant

Summary

Introduction

Indian agriculture showed an impressive growth over last decades that made the countryself-sufficient in terms of food grain production.ensuring food security for the burgeoning population using depleting resource base under the risks of climate change is a challenge for a country like India where 52 % of the net sown area is still unirrigated and rainfed. Several studies tried to estimate the impact of climate change on wheat productivity (Attri and Rathore, 2003; Jalota et al, 2013; Zaccharias et al, 2014; Kumar et al, 2014; Pramod et al, 2017) but they made use of indirect estimation procedures like crop simulation models which may ignore influence of many variables that influence crop production in on-farm conditions. A few studies have used direct estimation procedures (Birthal et al, 2014;Jha and Tripathi, 2017) using observed field data These studies have failed to segregate the impact of climate and nonclimate factors on wheat productivity and often incorrectly. Panel data regression models have been used to assess the potential impact of climate change as they account for onfarm adaptation to climate change and arenot subjected to omitted variable bias (Blanc and Schelkner, 2017)

Methods

Results

Conclusion