Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Sohbat Pur city, a district of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province
| Photo Credit: Zahid Hussain

Disaster events are not only becoming more frequent and severe but their impact is also expected to worsen. The year 2023 brought an end to the warmest decade on record, marked by unprecedented extreme weather events and large-scale disasters. These catastrophes were worsened by ongoing conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization titled ‘The Impact of Disaster on Agriculture and Food Security’ found that the frequency of extreme disaster events has risen significantly over the past 50 years. The 1970s saw approximately 100 disaster events per year. In the last 20 years, that number went up to about 400, globally (Chart 1). 

Chart 1 | The chart shows the number of disasters by EM-DAT (the international disaster database) grouping and total economic losses in $ billion.

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According to the EM-DAT database of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, 2022 witnessed nearly 31,000 deaths and an estimated $223.8 billion in economic losses from disasters, affecting over 185 million people. 

Agricultural activities and livelihoods rely heavily on environmental conditions, natural resources, and ecosystems. Globally, the agriculture sector faces growing threats from hazards such as flooding, water scarcity, drought, diminishing agricultural yields, fisheries depletion, loss of biodiversity, and environmental degradation. For instance, in Pakistan, exceptional monsoon rainfalls in 2022 led to nearly $4 billion in damages to the agricultural sector. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated over $21.4 billion in crop and rangeland losses in 2022, with drought and wildfires responsible for most of the crop losses.

Data from 88 Post-Disaster Needs Assessment surveys conducted from 2007 to 2022 in 60 countries indicated that agricultural losses constituted an average of 23% of the overall impact of disasters across all sectors. However, the available data are limited, primarily focusing on low-income countries and major extreme events. A comprehensive global estimate of economic losses across all sectors is unavailable.

PDNAs revealed that more than 65% of losses attributed to drought affected the agricultural sector, while floods, storms, cyclones, and volcanic activities each accounted for roughly 20% (Chart 2). 

Chart 2 | The chart shows the share of loss in agriculture by hazard type. 

However, data on loss and damage are not systematically collected or reported. To address this gap, the report used secondary data sources such as EM-DAT and FAOSTAT production data to quantify the impact of disasters on agriculture, with a specific focus on crop and livestock production. Findings indicated that estimated losses in these sub-sectors have been gradually increasing over the past three decades. 

The total loss from extreme events over the past 31 years amounted to approximately $3.8 trillion, averaging about $123 billion per year. 

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Losses across major crop and livestock product groups exhibited increasing trends (Chart 3). Over the past three decades, estimated losses in cereals averaged 69 million tonnes annually. Losses in fruits and vegetables, along with sugar crops, averaged 40 million tonnes each annually. Meats, dairy products, and eggs experienced an estimated loss of 16 million tonnes per year. 

Chart 3 | The chart shows the estimated loss in various product groups (in million tonnes) between 1991 and 2021.

The distribution of total losses across regions from 1991 to 2021 also reflected the geographic size of each region. Asia bore the largest share of economic losses (45%), while Africa, Europe, and the Americas displayed similar orders of magnitude. Oceania experienced the lowest total losses (Chart 4).

Chart 4 | The chart shows the distribution of the total estimated $3.8 trillion losses by region (1991-2021).

In absolute terms, high-income countries, lower-middle-income countries, and upper-middle-income countries reported higher losses, while low-income countries and Small Island Developing States experienced lower levels. However, when considering losses relative to agricultural value added, low-income countries suffered losses more than double those of upper-middle-income countries on average (Chart 5).

Chart 5 | The chart shows total agricultural losses as a share of agricultural GDP by country groups (1991-2021).

Source: FAO report titled “The Impact of Disasters on Agriculture and Food Security 2023”

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There has been a series of disruptive weather and climate phenomena in India this year, demonstrating the complexity of our precipitation system.

There was the Western disturbance, which usually brings much-needed moisture from European seas to the western Himalaya and parts of northern India in the winter and spring. But this year, the Western disturbance lived up to its name and remained active late into the summer, snapping at the heels of the southwest monsoon.

An El Niño phase

The widespread destruction of infrastructure and loss of life due to landslides and flooding in the western Himalaya and northern India raised concerns about the sustainability and resilience of our development projects in the mountains and floodplains. Between July 5 and July 20, the affected area was estimated to be between 2,124 and 7,362 sq. km. The population affected was potentially more than 25 lakh.

Climate-linked warming is likely to weaken winter precipitation from the Western disturbance and shift it to more intense rain events. If this happens later into the summer, its consequences will be of great concern.

Soon after this came evidence that an El Niño phase of the quasi-periodic El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – a phenomenon in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean – was intensifying and likely to affect the southwest monsoon.

Not all El Niño events have adverse effects on the southwest monsoon because the latter is driven by many ocean-atmosphere-land processes. But the relationship between the two entities has been changing over time. When an El Niño affects the southwest monsoon, another ocean-atmosphere phenomenon in the Indian Ocean – called the positive-phase Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – could balance the consequences.

Dynamic regression models have suggested that 65% of the inter-annual variability of the southwest monsoon, over many decades, can be attributed to the combined effects of ENSO and the IOD.

El Niño and food security

Agriculture depends on two types of water. Green water is rain-fed soil moisture tapped by food and cash crops, eventually transpiring into the atmosphere. Blue water is the water in rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and groundwater, which is the basis for irrigation in agriculture, apart from drinking and industry use supply, and to maintain ecological flows in rivers. 

The El Niño and other climate phenomena affect rainfed agriculture in many ways, from delaying the start of rains, and affecting sowing, to hot temperatures that may negatively influence plant growth and soil moisture.  

Despite investments in dams, reservoirs, and irrigation systems, around half of the cultivated area in India depends on green water, not blue water. Our daily diet in India – from cooking oil to diverse foods – also requires 3,268 litres of water per person per day on average, subject to regional variability. Some 75% of this footprint is green water, demonstrating the importance of rainfed agriculture to our food and nutritional security.

Even in irrigated areas, many dominant crops require green water to different extents. For example, in kharif season, rice paddy under irrigation uses green water to the tune of 35%. Many staple crops like tur dal, soybean, groundnut, and maize also rely considerably on green water at this time. In the 2015-2016 El Niño year, soybean production in India declined by 28% from the 2013-2022 average.

We have just emerged from one of the warmest and driest Augusts in many decades, and hope that the IOD or other phenomena will help reduce the impact of the El Niño on India’s agriculture, farmers, food security, food inflation, and conflicts over water-sharing between States.

El Niño and the northeast monsoon

At the end of the southwest monsoon, the blue water stock in our reservoirs and groundwater will partially determine the fate of the rabi crops sown in winter and the overall water security. Contributions of green water from the northeast monsoon in southeast India and the Western disturbance in the north will play significant roles as well.

Studies have found that 43% of heavy rainfall events in the northeast monsoon (including the 2015 Chennai floods that caused widespread devastation) coincided with an El Niño. We will be closely watching the rabi crops in 2024, which bank heavily on blue water or irrigation during the summer months, along with our overall water security.

Consider Central India’s highlands, encompassing 36 districts in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra, which are emerging as climate change hotspots critical for our water, food and ecological security. It includes 17 urban centres with populations over a lakh and the headwaters for five of India’s 10 major river basins. The basin precipitation ranges from 699 mm in the west to 1,380 mm in the east, with an average of 987 mm per annum.

This region experiences significant and perennial water stress, driven largely by rabi irrigation with blue water. As a result, some 70-78% of the landscape experiences water stress for four or more months in a year.

Of the 17 urban centres, 11 face water stress for six to eight months, with Nagpur enduring water stress for the longest duration.

Persistent uncertainties

The amount of monsoon precipitation has been declining since the 1950s, attributed by some climate scientists to the reduction in land-sea thermal gradient, in turn due to warming of the seas. However, indications of increased frequency of intense rain events and greater heat and moisture stress for people and ecosystems align with predictions of warming’s impact on the atmosphere’s water-holding capacity and acceleration of the hydrological cycle. These events increasingly interact with hydrologically incompatible land-use and built infrastructure, resulting in high exposure and vulnerability to disasters.

Global climate models and their regional equivalents have failed to simulate these observed trends in precipitation, increasing the uncertainty in future projections. However, climate modellers are trying hard to improve the models. Given the persistent uncertainties, we should base our adaptation plans on the idea that current trends will continue: more-frequent intense rain, summer heat and moisture stress, and declining monsoon precipitation in some parts of the country. It is possible that as warming continues, total rainfall in parts of India may increase but the share of extreme rain events may go up. When this tipping point will transpire is uncertain.

Attributing specific extreme rain events to climate change or natural dynamics in our complex climate systems, or both, is challenging for climate scientists. But mounting evidence suggests that a warming atmosphere is amplifying many natural dynamics within our complex climate systems.

How we respond

In terms of agriculture and food security, there is now an emphasis on reducing dependence on water-intensive crops, with millets being the crops of choice. Shifting to less water-intensive crops may reduce vulnerability of our food systems to phenomena like El Niño. One estimate suggests that more than 30% of blue water savings from such shifts, with some gains in protein and micronutrients but a slight reduction in calories. However, water saved in this manner may not necessarily help recharge our depleted aquifers or restore ecological flows in our rivers: new demands for the saved water quickly emerge unless appropriate policies are in place.

There are several adaptations and alternative crop strategies available now, thanks to the work of our farmers and agricultural scientists. They include shifting to millets and alternative varieties of dominant cereals and advisories to farmers to switch to crops with shorter growing cycles. The government, both at the Centre and in States, along with farmers, now benefit from forecasts of phenomena like El Niño and their impact on the monsoon and improvements in short-term weather forecasts and early warning systems for both intense rain and dry spells.

Based on decades of experience, it is clear that alternative short-term and long-term management of our dams and reservoirs is required to reduce the risk of dam-based flood disasters and ecological damage to aquatic ecosystems. 

How we respond as a society and in terms of governance to the water and climate change crisis, which links food, water, and ecological security through diversifying our agro-food systems, a lower dependence on blue water, rejuvenating our rivers, and sustainable water-sharing between humans and nature will to a great extent determine the well-being of 1.4 billion people.

Jagdish Krishnaswamy is dean, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bengaluru. The author acknowledges Kiran M.C., Geospatial Lab, IIHS for his contribution to this article.

Midday Meal workers burn copies of Union Budget 2023-24 during their protest, in Kolkata, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella organisation of more than 300 farmers’ outfits and the Right to Food Campaign, a platform for activists working on food and nutritional security, termed the Budget as an attack on farmers and the poor. They said in separate statements that the allocations for the agriculture sector and food subsidy had been reduced considerably in the Budget, presented in the Parliament on Wednesday.

The SKM, expressing shock and bewilderment at the Union Budget, said it had expected the Centre to appreciate the importance of the farm sector with the need to secure income and future of the rural farming community. “Instead, the Union Budget 2023 is the most anti-farmer Budget in the history of the nation,” they said.

The Budget was silent on doubling farmers’ income, the SKM said adding that the Centre “dishonestly stopped” giving data on the income of farmers and out of the targeted increase in the income of ₹13,000, only ₹4,400 had been achieved, that is only one-third of the target, the SKM said.

The grant for PM Kisan Samman Nidhi had been reduced, they said and alleged that the number of beneficiaries had been steadily declining and now the portal had stopped displaying real-time beneficiary data. “At a time of deep economic distress, this scheme gave some relief to farmers but now even that is being constricted,” the SKM said.

Social spending reduced

The Right to Food Campaign said it was shocked to see that the Budget reduced the government spending on the social sector to a huge extent. “The negative impact of the economic crisis that began even before the pandemic, has fallen disproportionately on those at the bottom of the pyramid,” the platform noted. The activists said with the discontinuation of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) from January 1, 2023, the ration entitlement of the people was halved.

“Women and children of the country have once again been ignored even when they have been most affected by the pandemic and the continued economic severity. The allocations for Samarthya (including maternity entitlements), and PM POSHAN (mid-day meals) have reduced considerably this year as well,” they said.

Labourers loading wheat at APMC wholesale market outskirts of Ahmedabad on May 17, 2022. 
| Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji

The Centre has amended its wheat export ban order of May 13 to allow export consignments that were registered in the Customs Department’s systems and handed over for examination on or prior to May 13 to be shipped out, the Commerce and Industry Ministry said on Tuesday.

The government also allowed shipment of a wheat consignment headed for Egypt, which was already under loading at the Kandla port, following a request by the Egyptian Government. A bulk of the 61,500 metric tonne wheat consignment had already been loaded for shipping to Egypt. The Centre has now permitted the exporter to load the remaining 17,160 metric tonnes so that the full consignment can sail out from Kandla.

Reiterating the intent behind last week’s ban order, the ministry said the decision would ensure food security and rein in inflation, while maintaining India’s reliability as a supplier as it would help other countries facing food deficits. The order also aimed to provide a clear direction to the wheat market to prevent hoarding of wheat supplies, the ministry asserted.

The export curbs notified last week came within a couple of days of the ministry’s announcement that official delegations would travel to several countries to pitch Indian wheat exports.

The curbs would not apply in cases where prior commitments had been made by private trade through Letters of Credit as well as in situations where permission is granted by the Centre following requests made by the governments of other countries to meet their food security needs.