Impact of climate change on production efficiency of rice and wheat crops in Punjab agriculture
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Date
2018
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Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Abstract
The present study examined the impact of climate change on production efficiency of rice and wheat crop in Punjab Agriculture. In order to accomplish the specific objectives, both primary as well as secondary data was used. The secondary data was collected to study the annual and seasonal (rice growing period-June to September and wheat growing period- November to March) trends in temperature (maximum and minimum) and rainfall during 30 years (1986 to 2015) at five locations of Punjab namely Bathinda, Fairdkot, Ludhiana, Ballowal Saunkhri and Patiala. Primary data was collected from the sample of 200 farmers from eight villages of 4 districts of Punjab namely Faridkot, Ludhiana, SBS Nagar and Gurdaspur districts through multi-stage random sampling technique. The study revealed that during the last three decades most of the locations experienced significant increase in maximum as well as minimum temperature in both rice and wheat growing period. The annual rainfall ranged from 296 mm to 1057 mm at different stations of Punjab; out of which about 75 per cent was received during rice growing period. To know the impact of climate change fixed effects panel model was applied and results revealed that the coefficient of minimum temperature has been found to be negative significant in both rice and wheat crop. The marginal effects revealed that an increase of 1°C of minimum temperature in rice growing period, will decrease the rice yield by 1.20 per cent. Likewise, the rise in maximum temperature in wheat crop would reduce the yield by 1.08 per cent. The projections were made and the results showed that with a significant change in climate, the yield of rice will be lower by around 16.05 per cent and wheat by about 5.43 per cent by the year 2100, indicating decline in rice yield will be almost three times more than that of wheat. Further, the study revealed that laser leveller and improvement in irrigation structure are the most important adaptations in response to climate variability. In adaptation strategies for paddy cultivation, the variable cost ha-1 was less in Direct Seeded Rice (`28417) as compared to non-adopters (`36816), thereby resulting into a cost saving of 30 per cent. Similarly, the adoption of Zero till wheat among different climate resilient technologies of wheat cultivation saved 5 per cent net returns as compared to non-adopter. The lack of knowledge about technology, lack of credit and low capacity building were the most important constraints in adoption of climate resilient technologies. Strengthening of agricultural credit and extension for effective transfer of technologies has been found to be the important components to cope up with climate variability.
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