False, Climate Home News, Climate Change Won’t Hurt India’s Sugar Crops – Is Accelerating With That?
A Google news search for the phrase climate change today revealed a story about Home Climate News Claims climate change is harming India’s sugarcane production. Nothing could be better than the truth. Against the backdrop of the normal annual boom and bust, tracking the variable monsoon cycles in India’s history, India’s sugarcane production and production has increased significantly as a result of global warming. moderate and carbon dioxide concentrations increased. As with other crops, the evidence clearly shows that climate change is benefiting India’s sugarcane producers.
inside Home Climate News story, titled “Sugarcane farmers in India struggle to cope with drought and floods,” the authors note that sugarcane accounts for 10% of India’s agricultural output, with India being both the world’s largest producer and consumer of sugarcane. Having established the critical nature of sugarcane production for India’s agricultural sector, unfortunately, the authors then jumped into unwarranted climate alarmism, issuing a statement claims that changing weather conditions caused a decrease in sugar production.
“The rainfall during the monsoon season, from June to September, is erratic this year,” [Kalua Mehmood, a sugarcane farmer in western Uttar Pradesh] told Home Climate News. “Mehmood is one of the millions of sugarcane farmers in India who are suffering the onslaught of climate change.”
Agriculture in India depends on the monsoon season. There is no data to suggest that as the Earth warms, monsoons become more intense or infrequent. If the monsoon does not become erratic, the new fluctuations in rainfall and drought will not be able to harm sugarcane farmers in India.
Indeed, data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) show that sugar production and production in India has increased significantly since 1990, with the increase in production partly due to the fertilization of the increase carbon dioxide concentration. FAO data shows that from 1990 to 2020:
- India’s sugarcane production increased by more than 64%, setting a new record of 10-fold production in 30 years;
- India’s sugarcane output increased by nearly 18 percent, setting a new record fivefold. (See picture below)
Like farming everywhere, production is tied to the weather. It may be true that some of India’s sugarcane producers have suffered a year of decline in 2022 due to variable rainfall this year. However, there are no long-term trends in weather changes or any evidence that monsoon-dependent sugarcane production is threatened by long-term climate change. Another year or two won’t be a climate crisis, Home Climate News.
Check the data before you hit the undefeatable climate alarm.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy and managing editor of Climate & Environment News. In addition to directing the Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett is also associated with Environment & Climate News, and is editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly Email. and host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
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