India’s food security is being choked by climate change
A warming planet is destabilising the cycles of rain and sun that are keeping the country fed.
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Although as a whole India is not having a particularly unusual monsoon, the average is concealing huge fluctuations across the country that is affecting crops.
PHOTO: REUTERS
David Fickling
The world’s most populous nation is more poorly endowed with farmland, per capita, than Greece or Algeria. That is going to make life harder as a warming planet destabilises the cycles of rain and sun that have kept it fed for millennia.
India last week suspended exports of non-basmati varieties of rice after heavy monsoon rainfall damaged newly planted crops due to be harvested in winter. With rice retail prices up 3 per cent in the past month and 11.5 per cent over the past year, the government hopes to quell food inflation by reserving more grain for the domestic market.
