NEW DELHI: India’s 2022 wheat production reduced by 3 per cent due to the heat wave in March, the government’s estimates say, even as an analysis based on climate models puts the figure at 4.5 per cent, with some of the major grain bowl states taking a hit of 10-15 per cent.
India is the second largest wheat producer in the world, and the heat wave led the government to pause its export. The heat wave has reduced India’s 2022 wheat production by 4.5 per cent compared to a normal-weather year, according to a statistical model built by Balsher Singh Sidhu from the University of British Columbia-Vancouver, using historical weather and wheat production data from 1966-2017, which is available freely from ICRISAT and Indian Meteorological Department.
The paper in pre-prints focuses on five wheat-producing states Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan which account for around 90 per cent of India’s wheat production. “While all five states are estimated to have experienced average yield losses of 4-6 per cent, some regions like Rampur, Bareilly, and Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh and Raipur in erstwhile Madhya Pradesh may be looking at 10-15 percent less production compared to a normal year. More alarmingly, some crop-cutting experiments, like those from Punjab, have reported yield losses of up to 30 per cent in certain places,” it said.
The agriculture ministry’s fourth advance estimate for the year released Wednesday said India’s wheat production is projected to have reduced by nearly 3 per cent to 1,068.4 lakh metric tonne and the reason attributed was a heat wave.