Climate Change and Indian Agriculture: Impacts on Crop Yield

This paper reviews the extant literature on the impacts of climate change on agriculture. We first discuss various methodologies used to study climatic impacts on crop yield. We then present a brief survey of studies from across the globe followed by a discussion on India-specific research. The empirical evidence on the effects of climate change on agriculture has been mixed: while some studies find evidence of adverse impacts others report evidence of positive effects. Applying nonparametric median regression technique to state-level time series data on average yield of rice and wheat, and on temperature and rainfall from 1968 to 2001, we further investigate the impacts of changes in these climate variables on rice and wheat yields in India. The results indicate that rising temperature has a significant negative impact and rising rainfall variability has a significant positive impact on the average rice yield. Furthermore, an increase in temperature variability over the crop year appears to have a significant positive impact on wheat yield.