Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture: Empirical Evidence from a South Indian State

Abstract

The present study provides a detailed empirical analysis of climate change impact on agriculture in Karnataka. Erratic rainfall and steady rise in temperature in tropical arid and semi-arid region has a significant impact on the farming communities. Against this backdrop, the present study has used a climate dataset constructed at finer spatial level to analyze the climate change impact on the net revenue and crop yields. A panel data, with a cross section of 20 districts and a time period of 21 years (1992 – 2012) was considered in the study. The fixed effect regression results show that temperature has a significant negative effect on the net revenue and crop yields. However, rainfall had a significant positive impact on net revenue and yields. Further, the study has also probed to analyze the agricultural vulnerability to climate change using indicator based method. The results showed that entire seven districts from north interior region were categorized in the extremely and highly vulnerable region. Out of eleven districts in south interior region, three were categorized in the extremely and highly vulnerable region. However, the result broadly indicated that agriculture in the north interior region of Karnataka is highly susceptible to climate change.