Climate Change and Sustainability of Agriculture-A Review

Climate is one of the most important input factors for agricultural productivity all over the world. Global warming because of anthropogenic green house effect has resulted in changing climatic patterns and increased intensity of extreme weather events over different regions of earth, which have adverse effect on agricultural productivity along with far reaching socio-economic impacts. Rapid emission and accumulation ofgreen house gases in the atmosphere has exposed us to the potential threat of global warming. As the climatic patterns all over the earth are controlled by the average temperatures, thus variations in the climatic patterns are observed because of increase in temperature. These variations can cause disasters including droughts and floods in different parts of the earth. All these factors have a direct effect on agriculture and pose a severe threat to crop productivity and food security especially in the tropical and sub-tropical areas. Several research studies indicate that Increase in the concentration of CO₂ upto about 600 ppm can counterbalance the adverse effect of rise in temperature by 1° C, but further increase in temperature will have negative impact on crop productivity. Improved understanding of the influence of climate on agricultural production is needed to cope with the expected changes in temperature and precipitation and to maintain agricultural sustainability and food security. Suitable mitigation/adaptation strategies need to be identified and adopted to meet the challenges posed by climate change on agricultural productivity.