Posted on August, 29, 2022 at 08:03 am
India’s wheat production is projected to have declined nearly three per cent to 106.84 million tonnes in the 2021-22 crop year. The decline is likely to have been caused by a heatwave that resulted in shrivelled grains in the northern states of Punjab and Haryana. There were reports that India was planning to import wheat in view of the shortage but the government denied it. This year, India recorded its warmest March in 122 years with a severe heatwave scorching large swathes of the country in the month. The average temperatures observed pan-India in April was 35.05 degrees Celsius, which was the fourthhighest for the month in 122 years. Agriculture experts underscore the need to raise the issue of climate change impacting India’s food security at the COP27 which is scheduled for November. They say that COP27 can be a critical turning point.
Shweta Saini, a senior consultant at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), said food security and green energies have to be balanced at these international negotiations. “For countries like India where the malnutrition rate is very high and it is an agriculturecentric country, we feel the commitment for food security and green energies has to be balanced. So, while India is talking about biofuel, the question we should be looking at is whether food can be used for fuel,” she said. The National Policy on Biofuels, 2018 allows production of ethanol from damaged food grains like wheat and broken rice. Devinder Sharma, a food policy and agricultural trade expert, said at COP27, countries like India need to stop their “obsession” with GDP. “Till the economy is not structured in a way to radically challenge the climate crisis, nothing will change, and that is something that needs to be brought out in the discussions at COP27,” he said. The COP is the main decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Source: First India