Climate Change Impact on Rice Yield in India – Vector Autoregression Approach

Climate change plays an important role in agricultural production. Agricultural productivity is highly affected by a number of factors including precipitation, temperature. This paper examines the relationship between the yield of two major rice crops (e.g., Kharif and Rabi) and three main climate variables (e.g., maximum temperature, minimum temperature and rainfall). The dynamic relationships among the variables considered for observing the impact of climate change on rice yields are examined based on Vector Autoregression (VAR) model with the use of Granger causality test, impulse response functions and variance decomposition for the data. Maximum and Minimum temperature have significant effects, meanwhile rainfall has negative impact on Kharif rice yield. Adverse effects on Rabi rice yield are observed by maximum temperature and rainfall, whereas minimum temperature affect yield positively. Appropriate adaptive techniques are recommended to overcome this emerging hazard of climate change on rice production.

Sri Lankan Journal of Applied Statistics 2015;16(3): 161-17