The United Nations agency, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said that the climatic change may cause a risk of hunger in India in coming days. The frequent floods and droughts are likely to affect the cereal production by as much as 18 per cent in the country. According to FAO report, India is at risk to lose as much as 125 million tonnes of its rain fed cereal production.

FAO Director-General, Jacques Diouf, said that the rainfed agriculture in secondary areas in semi-arid and sub-humid regions is mostly at risk. On the other hand, the industrialized countries are likely to gain in production potential.

He said:

Crop yield potential is likely to increase at higher latitudes for global average temperature increases of up to 1 to 3 degree centigrade depending on the crop and then decrease beyond that.

On the other hand, at lower latitudes, especially in the seasonally dry tropics, crop yield potential is likely to decline for even small global temperature rises, which would increase the risk of hunger.

Frequency incidents of droughts and floods in the subsistence sectors at low latitude may affect local production in negative direction. This is the responsibility of the science and technology of modern times to enhance the agricultural production in the next 30 with great pace in India. It should be more rapid than the Green Revolution did in last 30 years.

Doiuf further said that the use of biotechnologies such as in-vitro culture, embryo transfer and the DNA markers should be developed for supplement conventional breeding approaches to enhance yield levels, increase input use efficiency, reduce risk and boost the nutritional quality of grains in the country.

One can visibly see the impact of climate change on forests and on forest dependent people in India in the form of incidences of forest fires and outbreaks of forest pests and diseases in several parts in the country.

At the same time, he also praised the effort taken by the government of India in the areas of food safety such as mid-day meals, and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program.

He further said that India’s growth story is also confronted with a dark picture. A large section of the population is still out of the range of the benefits coming from the dynamic economic changes in the country.

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