HEAT, HARVEST, AND THE ECONOMY: WHY CLIMATE RESILIENCE IN AGRICULTURE MATTERS FOR ALL INDIANS
Climate Shocks Are Economywide Shocks
Rural Voice reports adverse impact on wheat production in Bihar, Rajasthan, southern Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh due to early heatwaves and extreme temperatures in March. However, the damage this year is expected to be less severe than in 2022.
When anomalous or extreme weather hits agricultural output, it doesn't just hurt farmers; it affects all of us. Droughts and heatwaves reduce food supply, push up prices, and fuel inflation. Weather-driven inflation risks prevent the Reserve Bank of India from lowering interest rates to stimulate economic growth. The impact cascades through the entire economy and a climate shock to agriculture becomes a macroeconomic shock. This critical connection between climate shocks and macroeconomic stability must be central to how we think about agricultural adaptation in India. When agriculture takes a hit, so does the economy.
Understanding Farmers' Responses, Not Just Production Losses
Climate shocks affect crop yields, but the impact on overall production or food availability is much smaller than what it used to be back in the 1960s or even 1980s. We have solid evidence that irrigation reduces yield losses from droughts and heatwaves. But yield is only part of the story. What happens to farmers' incomes, labor allocation, costs, and coping strategies? That's where the real pain—and key to resilience—lies. Indian farmers are not passive victims. They adapt, adjust inputs, switch crops, delay sowing, and diversify income. Understanding these responses is critical to designing effective advisories and support. The good news: data from India’s Cost of Cultivation & Production Data, a one-of-its-kind dataset, can help answer many of these questions. The problem: much of this data is not public. Opening it up will improve both the data and the solutions we derive from it.
Livestock: The Missing Piece in Adaptation
We know how heat hits wheat. But what about dairy and poultry? How smallholder dairy farmers adapt to heatwaves remains under-researched. Yet the value of output from dairying is bigger than rice and wheat combined. We need targeted adaptation strategies and clearer communication for the livestock farmers.
Water Governance: Beyond Simple Irrigation Solutions
Adaptation needs water control, but we continue to get it wrong. Old mistakes persist, and new ones are being made. Free or highly subsidized electricity for pumps in newly electrified Bihar and eastern UP is an example. These states, like so many others that electrified irrigation earlier, are also locking themselves into unsustainable paths. Free electricity weakens public finances and sets us up for future groundwater crises. We need to balance access with accountability. We need not just irrigation, but smarter, more equitable, and sustainable use of water. Without fixing water governance, we cannot build resilience.
Towards Smarter, Adaptive Advisories
We must upgrade from generic advisories to ones that are dynamic, high-resolution, and localized. Real-time data can power smarter decisions—if we invest in getting it to the farmer when and where it matters. We need climate-smart advisories that are updated in real time and tailored to local geographies, crops, and farmers’ resources and constraints. With high-resolution weather data, remote sensing, and AI-based analytics, this is now technically feasible. But for it to work, we need to invest in systems that can deliver timely, trusted, and targeted advice.
Making Agriculture more Resilient to Climate Change is a National Imperative
The challenge of climate adaptation in Indian agriculture is not simply an environmental or agricultural issue—it's a matter of economic stability, food security, and national resilience. As extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, our response must evolve from reactive crisis management to proactive resilience building. This requires coordinated action across multiple fronts: better data sharing, smarter water policies, livestock-inclusive strategies, and technology-enabled advisory systems. The cost of investing in adaptation is far lower than the economic disruption of climate shocks. By recognizing the economy-wide implications of agricultural vulnerability, we can mobilize the political will and resources needed to build true climate resilience—not just for farmers, but for all of India.
Avinash Kishore is a Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI.
