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A few years ago, a group of us from Delhi, as well as members of the Gujarat Agricultural Labor Union and the International Union of Workers of India (IUCN). feeding, traveled to eastern Gujarat to talk to farmers about how the climate could affect their livelihoods. We found that warmer winters, especially higher nighttime temperatures, resulted in total or partial dew. This had an adverse effect on the harvest rabi
"The winters have been getting colder for about seven or eight years," said a group of farmers in Jer Umaria, in the district from Panchmahal. "Our wheat production has halved. The dew does not fall anymore. Village after village of Panchmahal, unable to afford wells and with undeveloped water markets in this predominantly adivasi area, most marginal farmers saw their yield greatly reduced due to less dew. Many were forced to leave their lands fallow.
Rising temperatures also had an impact on agriculture in distant Sikkim, but differently. In the Indu Kush Himalayas as a whole, the average temperature increased by 1.24 ° C in 1951-2014, about twice as much as India's average increase over the same period. Combined with the sharp decline in precipitation in the northeast – 15% below normal over the last 20 years – and prolonged drought periods, many mountain sources have lower flow, if not are not completely dry.
"The productivity of crops has dropped considerably," said Ghanashyam Sharma, director of The Mountain Institute India in Gangtok, The Wire . "In Pendam, in the Sikkim East district, many farmers can no longer grow wet rice because of lack of water. Its impacts are uneven [–] Small farmers and marginal farmers are particularly vulnerable because of their high dependence on agriculture and chronic food insecurity. "
These are just two of the many ways in which climate change increased variability affects farmers in different parts of the country.Later this week, thousands of farmers and farm workers organized by the Coordinating Committee of all India, Kisan Sangharsh, will meet near the Parliament.One of the main demands of their charter is "a special three-week session of Parliament to discuss exclusively the giant agrarian crisis" and its adoption by "two vital Kisan Mukti bills" on indebtedness and minimum remunerative support prices for agricultural products. [19659002] A petition addressed to President Ram Nath Kovind draws his attention and attention on the "general precariousness" faced by farmers A key element of this precariousness is the many impacts of climate change and increased variability in agriculture. Let's look at four big ones, all of very long duration.
Changes Harming Farmers
First, even though moderate rainfall decreased significantly in most of India in 1901-2014, extreme precipitation (over 150 mm per day) are becoming more common. A study indicates that there is a trend "related to global sea surface temperatures".
A 2017 article in the journal Nature Communications showed that extreme rainfall had fallen three times more often in the early 1950s along a large belt in the center of the city. 39; India. This could increase flooding and damage crops.
This occurs even when rainfall variability has increased – particularly a reduction in the southwestern monsoon since 1950, partly related to the heat of the Indian Ocean.
Raghu Murtugudde, earth system scientist at the University of Maryland, said in an article published in by Nature : "The greatest concern of agriculture is that the Average precipitation has declined but as the extremes have increased, the onset of the monsoon is delayed, and the removal of the monsoon is earlier. So the crop calendar is affected and crop damage has increased. "
Similarly, Sharma said," Farmers here are frequently exposed to particularly long periods of drought, which results in considerable crop losses and incomes. "
generalized drought problem Studies show that the area, duration and intensity of monsoon droughts have increased considerably in India since the mid-1950s. Due to a lower temperature difference between the Indian Ocean and the Indian land mbad, droughts are not reduced to reduced rainfall: higher temperatures also increase the incidence of droughts, their intensity and intensity. their impact
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, inland areas tend to be affected by drought caused by global warming, including Bundelkhand, some of which have been confronted with persistent droughts during the last two decades.
During our visit to Bund elkhand in 2009, we witnessed a tragedy. The great lakes were dry for the first time, lakhs of farm laborers and small farmers – men and women – emigrated with their entire families. Livestock was left in the dust due to shortages of water and fodder.
Yogendra Yadav of Swaraj Abhiyan and others conducted a thorough investigation on Bundelkhand during the 2015 drought. At a meeting in Delhi later that year, he said: "L & # 39, compensation is low and late. We covered a hundred villages. … In Bundelkhand, 60% of households have not eaten any milk in the past month, 40% have eaten no dal.
A third way in which agriculture is affected is due to heat waves. An article published in 2016 by P. Rohini, M. Rajeevan and AK Srivastava in the journal Nature Scientific Reports showed a significant increase in the frequency and duration of heat waves over areas of the Earth. India between 1961 and 2013. They were caused, among other reasons, by a warmer tropical Indian Ocean.
Excess heat increases evaporation, which dries up the soil. Excess heat during certain phases of the crop cycle has been shown to affect the yield of crops such as wheat and some fruits in northern India. It also focuses on cows, buffaloes and other farm animals, which affects their health and milk yield.
It can also make farm work more dangerous. During the summer of 2015, more than "2,500 excess deaths" occurred in India during a heat wave "exacerbated by climate change," according to an article published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society the following year. This will only become more frequent, widespread and deadly with the worsening of global warming.
The centrality of the warming of the Indian Ocean
The badimilation of many studies suggests that a warming of the Indian Ocean is a common factor in the decrease in average rainfall since the 1950s widespread drought, extreme rainfall, longer heat waves and longer and more frequent rainstorms. All of these changes are hurting Indian agriculture and farmers.
The Indian Ocean, like all the world's oceans, is warming mainly because more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the oceans. However, the Indian Ocean is warming more than other equatorial oceans, in part because it also receives heat from other oceans. According to Murtugudde, "If the Southern Ocean heats up, it brings more warmth and if the Pacific warms up, the Indonesian stream provides more."
More surprisingly, the Indian Ocean is also warming faster than the Indian landmbad, "Pollution causes solar dimming and does not allow the earth to heat up as much," he said. . The difference in temperature between the subcontinent and the ocean, an important factor of the summer monsoon in India, has therefore diminished. Murtugudde: "This has resulted in a reduction of about 10% in the average monsoon since the summer of 1950." And the drought that is spreading.
Impacts will intensify
Most of these impacts will intensify because the world will only get warmer, especially thanks to the oceans: because of their thermal inertia, they should release much of the heat absorbed in the past.
Such a long-term effect on Indian agriculture worsening is the rise in sea level. During my visit to the Sunderbans in 2014, I found that small farming was devastated Farmland nibbled due to water runoff, plots now on the shoreline became saline.
The rise in sea level is expected to accelerate worldwide. Until now, it has been mostly linear. In the foreseeable future, it will be motivated by the accelerated melting of the large icecaps of Greenland and Western Antarctic, a process that will last for centuries. The result will be for millions of farmers, fishermen and other communities living on some of India's most fertile lands, along the country's 7,500 km of coastline, to make facing what the Sunderbans farmers are facing today.
Perhaps we can visualize a farmer March 20, with an additional demand: the relocation, for lands and houses they lost in front of a rising sea. This, the other impacts discussed above and many more, constitute the elements of a long-term crisis confronting Indian farmers in the face. It depends on the speed with which we intervene now .
Nagraj Adve works and writes on issues related to global warming. His Pamphlet, Global Warming in the Indian Context: Introductory Overview was translated into Hindi, Kannada and Tamil.
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