Effects of Monsoon Variability on Agriculture

Abstract

In the tropics the most important climatic element for agriculture is rainfall. The dependence of Indian agriculture on monsoon rainfall is well known (Swaminathan, 1983); in fact, the Indian economy has been described as a gamble on the monsoon rains. We thus expect any climatic change involving a large-scale change in rainfall to have a significant impact on agricultural productivity. However, as pointed out in Section 1, there is no evidence for long-term increasing or decreasing rainfall, either for the Indian region as a whole or for meteorological subdivisions of the country. Thus, in the Indian context, it is more pertinent to analyze impacts of climatic variability rather than of climatic change.