📍Climate Change Will Spike Wheat Prices

One of the frightening consequences of climate change is rapidly diminishing water availability. Glaciers melting, disturbed and weak monsoons and extreme heat causing drying up of surface water sources like lakes, ponds and tanks will lead to conditions of severe water stress in the coming years.

The impending water scarcity is a growing threat to global food production, particularly for crops that depend on rainfall rather than irrigation. Globally, 80% of the arable land is rainfed, that is unirrigated and dependent on the monsoon. Only 20% of the arable land is irrigated. In India the figures are 45% irrigated land and 55% rainfed land. Severe water stress is projected to result in reduced harvests accompanied by a spike in food prices in the market and hunger among the poorer sections of society. 

In a Danish study done at the Centre for Climate Change in Aarhus University, scientists found a clear correlation between the area affected by severe water scarcity and global wheat prices. They showed that in the years when large areas were under severe water stress, there was a corresponding increase in wheat prices. When there is not enough moisture in the soil during key growing periods, harvests are likely to fail and food prices therefore rise.

Climate model projections suggest that water scarcity will expand as global warming progresses. The Aarhus study predicts that a temperature increase of about 3°C could raise global wheat prices three times relative to 2010. The reason why global wheat prices are particularly linked to severe water stress is because in most regions of the world, the crop is grown under the least favorable soil moisture conditions. Top wheat producers in temperate countries like Russia, US, Canada and Australia are likely to see falling wheat harvests and rising prices in the global market. The problem these countries will face is that they do not have a substitute crop for wheat. 

India however can cope better with the heat and water stress challenges of climate change because it does have a potential alternative or supplement to wheat. It has many varieties of millets that can be trialled as supplementary crops in the wheat season. Millets withstand high heat and water stress much better than wheat, and they can be cultivated in a wide variety of soils. Blessed with a large genetic diversity in millets, India can indeed counter the climate damage to wheat production. I believe targeted research will yield high yielding, nutritious varieties of millets as substitutes/ supplements to the wheat crop.