Climate change has turned India into an agricultural superpower – Just ask my grandparents – Excited about that?
By Vijay Jayaraj
My grandparents survived a nationwide famine in the 1960s that pushed many Indians into terrible poverty. Little did they know then that they would go on to become farmers producing some of the best rice and coconuts on the planet.
Starting with buying small fields, my grandparents got extra income from their professional profession and other businesses with profits from rice and eventually invested in a coconut farm. Their story is part of India’s agricultural revolution – a transition made possible in part by warmer temperatures and higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in today’s climate.
According to the researchers, poverty and scarcity of grain caused the famine of 1960-1965, which was preceded by many similar disasters that killed tens of millions of people over the centuries.
However, much changed in the 1970s when the Indian government invited American agronomist Norman Borlaug to work with Indian scientists to introduce genetically modified crops with better disease resistance. and for higher productivity.
Along with crops that failed less and yielded greater returns, the green revolution of the later 20th century was aided by moderate increases in both temperature and CO2 levels – the latter having may be the result of emissions from human activities.
Contrary to the popular narrative that climate change is an “existential threat”, the Earth’s trees have been recovering from the “browning” process of the Little Ice Age, which occurred since the 20th century. 14th to 19th centuries. Modern levels of warmth and CO2 are facilitating the greening shown in satellite images and contributing to the recording of crop harvests.
British meteorologist Hubert Lamb, founder of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, says that the Little Ice Age devastated economies with crop failures. In a widely accepted paper, he wrote that a “remarkably warm climate in many parts of the world” existed from AD 1000–1200, followed by a cooling culmination with coldest temperatures between 1500 and 1700 – “the coldest period since the last ice age occurred”.
These climate changes were “certainly what upset the human economy at the time (and probably at any time),” says Lamb.
The cold finally gave way to rising temperatures in the 18th century, before the modern industrial revolution in Europe and North America.
The positive effects of modern climates are found in arid climates like India. NASA reports: “For rainwater-grown wheat grown in more arid climates, such as southern Africa and India, the results showed a doubling of carbon dioxide levels and the effects of related to their climate change, increasing yields by 8 percent, an increase due to crops reducing water requirements by up to 50 percent. As is the case with rain-fed corn in arid climates, without the carbon dioxide boosting, these rain-irrigated wheat plants wouldn’t be able to cope either because of the greater water pressure exerted on them. , resulting in a 29% decrease in productivity. “
Although the population has doubled to 1.3 billion since the 1960s, India is now able to produce enough food crops for both domestic and export needs. In fact, since 2017, the whole country has continuously recorded record harvests of food crops.
For crop year 2021-22, “record production is estimated for rice, maize, cashews, dried nuts, rapeseed and mustard, oilseeds and sugarcane.” At 315.72 million tons, 5 million tons higher than the previous crop year.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “India is the world’s largest producer of milk, beans and jute and ranks as a major producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, peanuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton. Monday. It is also one of the leading producers of spices, livestock and crops. “
A recent Australian study reported that “CO2 fertilization was correlated with an 11% increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across arid regions studied in Australia, North America. , Middle East and Africa.”
Today’s warmth and CO2 levels are a boon to human civilization, not a bad thing. Just ask my grandparents.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at CO2 Alliance, Arlington, VA. He holds a master‘holds a degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, UK and resides in India.
This comment is the first published at Daily caller September 3, 2022.
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