The anticipated climate change will adversely affect the productivity of livestock directly due to increased heat stress, indirectly it will affect the livestock by causing feed and fodder shortages, reducing biodiversity, water availability and increasing the incidences of vector-borne livestock diseases. On the other hand, the livestock keeping farm households mainly small farm households will be affected directly as they rear livestock for their livelihood. Interestingly, over the years, the livestock keeping households have increased at a tremendous rate for the small and marginal, medium and semimedium farm household categories as they reduce the risk arising from extreme climate conditions. So, it becomes imperative to adopt adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on livestock given their importance in smallholder farmers' livelihood in India. Some of researchers in past have recommended certain adaptation and mitigation strategies for reducing the climate change impact on livestock. But, are these adaptation and mitigation strategies applicable or viable in the context of smallholder farmers in India? This remains an unsolved puzzle. This paper tries to demystify certain myths associated with these strategies as well as explore the ground realities. The present policy of indiscriminate crossbreeding of local cattle with exotic cattle should be reviewed and reoriented for smallholder dairy farmer especially, in dry and rainfed regions where there is scarcity of fodder and water which are required heavily by crossbred cattle. The study clearly reflects that the adaptation research should be country specific as the strategies suitable for one country may not be viable for the others as there is considerable difference in local conditions of different countries.
A large area of Gujarat and Rajasthan is rain-fed exposing rural population to food prices spike due to frequent droughts. The present study was conducted in year 2020 and is based on NSSO data on household consumption expenditures of rural households of these states for the year 2009 to analyse the effects that food price changes have on food expenditure and calorie intake. The results show a strong negative effect of price rises on calorie intake. The negative impact of prices of foods particularly wheat, and milk is more on richer than on poorer households as they have the capability to cut calorie intake in the event of a price rise while its opposite for coarse cereals. The food prices particularly, milk, wheat and, pulses also have highly positive influence on food expenditure of poorer households. Rice price does not have much significant effect on food security in both the states.
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