The Effect of Climate Change on Food Security in India

The present study was taken up with the intention of analyzing the development of the factors like rainfall, temperature, production, productivity, procurement, off take, per capita availability of food grains over a period of time. Rice and wheat were considered for the study. It was observed that annual rainfall has grown at a rate of 0.08 per cent annually which was negligible. Over a period of 42 years, rainfall during January- February and March to May has grown at a negative rate of -0.18 per cent and -0.2 per cent respectively. Whereas, the rainfall during the important season of monsoon viz. June to September has grown at a rate of 0.1 per cent annually. The co efficient of variation was highest at 24 per cent for the season January to February, barring which all other seasons had minimal variability. The production of rice has grown at a rate of 2.32 per cent annually. The productivity has also grown at a rate of 1.96 per cent annually. The coefficient of variation was 27 and 23 per cent in the case of production and productivity respectively. The procurement under the PDS has grown at a rate of 5.84 per cent per annum, with the off take also growing at a similar rate of 5.83 per cent. The stock of rice has grown at 5.37 per cent. The per capita net availability of food grains has grown at a negligible rate of 0.12 per cent. The population of India has grown at a rate of 1.96 per cent during the same period. It can be noticed that the growth in production, productivity, procurement, off take and stock has been higher than the population growth. It was observed that there was a direct correlation between production of rice and all the other factors taken into consideration. This relation was highly correlated and significant statistically in the case of area, productivity, procurement, off take, stocks and population. The area under wheat has grown at a steady rate of 0.98 per cent per annum with not much variability. The procurement of wheat under the Public Distribution System has grown at a rate of 4.41 per cent compared to the 3.32 per cent growth of off take and 3.92 per cent growth of stock of wheat under PDS. The production of wheat had a positive strong correlation with the area under wheat, productivity, procurement, off take, per capita availability of wheat and population which was significant at 5 per cent probability.