Influence of climatic and non-climatic factors on sustainable food security in India: a statistical investigation

Abstract

The present study assesses the effect of climatic and non-climatic factors on sustainable food security in India. It estimates food security index using composite Z-index technique with panel data of 13 states of India. It reveals that all components of food security have positive and significant association to each other. There exists high food inequality across Indian states. Poverty is the most detrimental factor to sustain food security; it is significantly associated with food insecurity. Therefore, Indian policy makers are desired to implement effective development scheme for poverty eradication. Estimates also imply that per capita food-grain availability negatively impacted due to changing climatic factors and diversity in socioeconomic variables. Hence, there is essential to increase food production through cropping intensity, appropriate irrigation facilities, application of modern technology and high yielding verities of seeds in cultivation; infrastructural development and more public spending in agricultural R&D to achieve sustainable food security in India.

Measuring the Climate Variability Impact on Cash Crops Farming in India: An Empirical Investigation

“…Aforesaid process is done through the C ++ statistical software, while SPSS statistical software is used to extract and bring data to excel format. Minimum temperature, maximum temperature and precipitation in three growth periods i.e., sowing time, growing time and harvesting time of each crop is integrated in regression models [8][9][10]. Interpolation and extrapolation techniques are used to fill the missing values to complete the time series during 1971-2014 in each state-wise panel data [1,3,4,[6][7][8][9][10]14].…”

“…Maximum tempereture, minimum tempereture and precipitation are the crucial weather factors which are significantly associated with growth, development and productivity of crops. So these factors are considered as a climatic factors [1,5,8,10,19,25,26,41]. To estimate the variability in climatic factors, the original value of a particular climatic factor is subtracted from the mean value of respective climatic factor for time period 1971-2014.…”

“…Indian agriculture is highly vulnerable due to climate change. In this context, numerous of studies have assessed the impact of climate change on yield and production of food-grain and cash crops in different regions/states in India [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. In brief: Singh, et al [12]; Kumar and Sharma [1]; Ayyogari, et al [13]; Kumar, et al [6]; Kumar, et al [14]; Yadav, et al [15]; Singh, et al [9] have investigated the impact of climate change on potato yield, Hundal and Kaur [16]; Ashalatha, et al [17]; Kumar and Sharma [18]; Kumar and Sharma [1]; Birthal, et al [19]; Kumar, et al [14]; Yadav, et al [15]; Singh, et al [9]; Ramachandran, et al [11] have assessed the climate change impact on groundnut yield, Nath, et al [20]; Kumar and Sharma [1]; Kumar, et al [14]; Singh, et al [9] have observed the climate change impact on sesame productivity, and Masters, et al [21]; Sankaranarayanan, et al [22]; Moorthy, et al [23]; Deshmukh and Lunge [24]; Ashalatha, et al [17]; Kumar and Sharma [1]; Hebbar, et al [2]; Raju, et al [25]; Thakare, et al [26]; Kumar, et al [14]...…”

“…Descriptive and empirical results of aforesaid studies were based on time series and district-wise/state-wise panel data, which were included crop productivity as a dependent variable. Few studies have incorporated per hectare output (in monetary) of a cash crop as a dependent variable and it was regressed with climatic and nonclimatic factors using district-wise/state-wise panel data in India [7,9,10,14,19,27].…”

“…Most researchers have used agricultural production per hectare land (in monetary) of selected food-grain and cash crops as dependent variables, which was regressed with climatic and non-climatic factors using state-wise panel data in India [3,4,6,10,14,27,28]. Few studies have segregated the agricultural productivity (in monetary) of Rabi and Kharif crops to assess the impact of climate change on it using state-wise and district-wise panel data in India [1, 4-6, 10, 27].…”