Climate Change, Weather Anomalies, and Agricultural Productivity in India

The impact of climate change on agriculture productivity is well known. Studies in India and globally have documented the impact on specific crops. However, few studies have attempted to develop a method to estimate the impact of changes in temperature and rainfall on a range of crops. In this paper we consider all major food and non-food crops in India, namely, wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, pearl millet, sugarcane, cotton, chickpea, pigeon pea, groundnut, rapeseed and mustard, and oilseeds. We construct temperature and rainfall anomalies, which are divergences over the long-term (1966 to 2017) average values and assess their impact on crop yields over the same period (during which both temperature increases and rain volatility are well assessed). Across different specifications and methods, and undertaking robustness corrections, our panel data finds that rain and temperature anomalies affect yields negatively across almost all crops, both significantly and consistently. We find that the availability of greater data makes it possible to assess a large set of crops over a long period of time yielding highly robust results