Looking Beyond Rice and Wheat: Climate Change Impacts on Food Systems and Food Security in India

Abstract

Extant studies on potential climate change impacts in India, however, solely focus on the big 3 staples — rice, wheat and maize —which have attracted much of the attention of the scientific community. Such narrow focus is an incomplete portrayal of the potential climate change impacts on food security given the growing recognition of production diversity for improved human nutrition. To address this gap, this paper estimates the potential impacts of climate change on 17 Indian crops using district level data. We identify particular crops based upon their degree of vulnerability to climate change. We further use climate models to project two representative climate pathways (RCPs). Our findings have useful implications for climate change adaptation and production diversity in order to enhance food security achieve better nutritional outcomes.