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Navigating food security in India: unravelling the interplay of climatic and non-climatic factors

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Abstract

Adequate access to nutritious food is essential for human health and well-being. However, attaining food security has become a grave concern due to increasing population and climate change vulnerabilities. Recently, several studies around the globe have indicated that climate change is likely to impact food security. Studies also show that some non-climatic factors are crucial in determining food security. The present study, therefore, investigates the nexus between food security and non-climatic and climatic factors in the context of India. This paper has considered both climatic factors (temperature, precipitation, and carbon emissions) and non-climatic factors (land and electricity used in the agriculture sector) as explanatory variables, whereas the crop production index is considered a proxy for food security. The “autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL)” model has been used to assess the variables' short- and long-run association by considering the time range from 1990 to 2020. The outcome of the estimation indicates that precipitation, carbon emissions, land, and electricity significantly impact food security in both the short and long run. However, the impact of temperature on food security is insignificantly negative in the short run and positive in the long run. This study thus suggests that the government should develop and implement comprehensive policies to promote sustainable agriculture practices to improve the country's food security level.

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Data availability

The data set used in the current study is compiled from the following sources: https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/download-data. https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=World-Development-Indicators#selectedDimension_WDI_Ctry. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/energy-statistics-data-browser?country=INDIA&fuel=Energy%20consumption&indicator=ElecConsBySector.

Notes

  1. Temperature (measured in degrees Celsius) shows the change in hotness or coldness of the earth’s surface, which has a more significant impact on food security by altering the agricultural production in tropical countries like India.

  2. Precipitation (measured in millimeters) shows the variation in rainfall patterns in a year and as a significant impact on India’s food security because more than 50% of agricultural lands in India are rainfed.

  3. Carbon emissions (measured in metric tons per capita) influence climate change and, due to its higher concentration in the atmosphere, adversely affect agricultural productivity by depleting soil quality and crop growth, ultimately affecting a country's food security.

  4. Land under cereal production represents “the harvested area of a country and plays a crucial role in ensuring food security by enhancing agricultural output” (Behera et al., 2023, p. 6).

  5. Electricity consumption in the agriculture sector shows the use of electricity for irrigation and operation of machinery used for planting, harvesting, processing, and storage of agricultural products.

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Acknowledgements

The authors give due credit to the Climate Change Knowledge Bank and the World Development Indicators of the World Bank and the International Energy Agency for making their data sources accessible.

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  1. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, Odisha, 769008, India

    Soumyanayani Mahali & Jalandhar Pradhan

  2. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, Patna, India

    Rajendra N. Paramanik

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SM and JP involved in design of the study. SM wrote the Paper. SM and RNP analyzed the data. SM, RNP and JP involved in finalizing the article.

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Mahali, S., Paramanik, R.N. & Pradhan, J. Navigating food security in India: unravelling the interplay of climatic and non-climatic factors. Environ Dev Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04486-9

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