Agricultural Risk Management to Combat Climate Change Effects

Abstract

The urgent need to increase food production to feed the ever-growing population has resulted in a large increase in the land area used for agriculture especially in developing countries. In recent years the world community has become increasingly concerned about the adverse effects of climate change on food production, natural ecosystems, freshwater supply, health sector and property loss. Climate change effect is already seen and is bound to continue, even under the most optimistic emissions scenarios. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the global mean temperature may increase between 1.4 and 5.8 °C by 2100 (IPCC, 2007). The impact due to this unprecedented increase in extreme weather events would be particularly severe in the tropical areas, which mainly consist of developing countries, including India. An analysis of 100 years of rainfall data in India reveals that the frequency of 'below-normal rainfall in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid regions is 54-57%, while severe and rare droughts occurred once every eight to nine years in arid and semi-arid zones. For instance, the impact of the drought 2002 spread over 56% of the land mass and threatened the livelihoods of 300 million people across 18 states in India.

The main determinant of agricultural production is the variation of weather variables like temperature, precipitation and sunshine etc. Extreme weather events like, droughts, floods, frost and heat and cold waves affect both crops and livestock. The major concern is the frequency of occurrence of these events. Farming community especially small and marginal category does not have fast resilient ability to tide over ill effects of vagaries of weather and therefore they are disproportionately vulnerable to the severity of extreme climate events. Nonetheless, the impact of climate variability and change on farmer’s livelihood in different agro-climatic regions and the changes in risk management approaches have shaped the mitigation and the response strategies of farmers and societies over the years. There has been a dramatic technological progress in the understanding of climate systems, as well as in monitoring and forecasting weather events on the scale of seasons and beyond. The advent of more reliable forecasts goes hand-in-hand with emerging trends in risk management, where reactive strategies are gradually being replaced with more anticipatory, proactive and forward looking approaches. The enterprise of agriculture is so fragile, affected by many uncontrollable events that are often related to weather including excessive or insufficient rainfall, hail, extreme temperatures and frost etc. that can severely impact yields and production levels. In the light of above, it is imperative to understand agricultural risks due to climatic variability and change and the ways of management deserves serious attention and research.