Water–food–energy nexus with changing agricultural scenarios in India during recent decades

Abstract

Abstract. Meeting the growing water and food demands in a densely populated country like India is a major challenge. It requires an extensive investigation into the changing patterns of the checks and balances behind the maintenance of food security at the expense of depleting groundwater, along with high energy consumption. Here we present a comprehensive set of analyses which assess the present status of the waterfood-energy nexus in India, along with its changing pattern, in the last few decades. We find that with the growth of population and consequent increase in the food demands, the food production has also increased, and this has been made possible with the intensification of irrigation. However, during the recent decade (after 1996), the increase in food production has not been sufficient to meet its growing demands, precipitating a decline in the per-capita food availability. We also find a statistically significant declining trend of groundwater storage in India during the last decade, as derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite datasets. Regional studies reveal contrasting trends between northern and western-central India. North-western India and the middle Ganga basin show a decrease in the groundwater storage as opposed to an increasing storage over western-central India. Comparison with well data reveals that the highest consistency of GRACE-derived storage data with available well measurements is in the middle Ganga basin. After analysing the data for the last 2 decades, we further showcase that, after a drought, the groundwater storage drops but is unable to recover to its original condition even after good monsoon years. The groundwater storage reveals a very strong negative correlation with the electricity consumption for agricultural usage, which may also be considered as a proxy for groundwater pumped for irrigation in a region. The electricity usage for agricultural purposes has an increasing trend and, interestingly, it does not have any correlation with the monsoon rainfall as computed with the original or de-trended variables. This reveals an important finding that the irrigation has been intensified irrespective of rainfall. This also resulted in a decreasing correlation between the food production and monsoon rainfall, revealing the increasing dependency of agricultural activities on irrigation. We conclude that irrigation has now become essential for agriculture to meet the food demand; however, it should be judiciously regulated and controlled, based on the water availability from monsoon rainfall, specifically after the drought years, as it is essential to recover from the deficits suffered previously.

Climate variability, rice production and groundwater depletion in India

“…From a production standpoint, transpiration efficiency of rice is low [9], and evapotranspiration increases with temperatures [10]. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in rice production in India depending on rainfall levels, surface water availability, and groundwater extraction [11,12]. Such factors can be analyzed in empirical modeling of the data on rice outputs.…”

“…Although agricultural data at the district level in India can provide useful insights [15], data on inputs are typically available at the state level. While it is simpler to conduct analyses of national averages [11], such analyses cannot address the heterogeneity in climates. Thus, a useful approach for understanding the effects of climate variability would be to model proximate determinants of rice outputs at the state level and, where possible, augment the analyses with more disaggregated data.…”

Research and Education in India on Climate Change

“…In the area of policy, the faculty interests include: energy, water, vulnerability and adaptation and corporate sustainability. Examples of their work and publication in the past two years include: Improving global forecast system of extreme precipitation events with regional statistical model 28 ; An improved prediction of Indian summer monsoon onset from state-of-the-art dynamic model using physics-guided data-driven approach 29 ; Waterfood-energy nexus with changing agricultural scenarios in India during recent decades 30 . IITB (DESE) researchers have participated in a study of: Life cycle greenhouse gas impacts of coal and imported gas-based power generation in the Indian context 31 32 ; Assessment of urbanization and urban heat island intensities using Landsat imageries during 2000-2018 over a sub-tropical Indian city 33 .…”

Including Farmer Irrigation Behavior in a Sociohydrological Modeling Framework With Application in North India

“…Historical and perturbed values can be seen in Table 1. While considerable uncertainty surrounds Indian rainfall projections, research points toward more frequent extreme events (see Barik et al, 2017;Jena et al, 2015;Johnson et al, 2016;Menon et al, 2013;Moors et al, 2011;Roxy et al, 2015;Sinha et al, 2006).…”