India may lose up to 17 percent of its farming income due to climate change

Times of India: India could lose between seven and seventeen per cent of its income from farming because of climate change, a new study has claimed. Using data on weather and the economic success of farming to model the effect of future warming on the predicted income from farming, Robert Mendelsohn of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Apurva Sanghi of the World Bank said that the focus of their study was on the biological relationship between weather and crop yield instead of the economic connection between weather and farming revenue.

"Our forecast is lower, but I think it's also more realistic," says Mendelsohn. "By studying how well farmers do financially, we take adaptation into account. The income from farming will depend not only on the direct effect of the weather on the crops and livestock but also on whatever the farmers do to cope with this," he added.

They predicted that Brazil could lose between ten and thirty percent of its farming income under the same scenario, and added that the difference between the countries is most likely due to India's agriculture being less sensitive to climate-dependent changes in rainfall….

A tea plantation in India, shot by "Rightee," Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License