A joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said that high temperature extremes are anticipated to be more frequent and more intense throughout the Indian subcontinent, making rice farming increasingly vulnerable to heat stress.

The report titled ‘Extreme heat and agriculture’ said 70 per cent of the caloric intake in India comes from rice. Summer monsoon rainfall provides up to 80 per cent of the annual precipitation in India. Compound hot and dry extremes are a major threat to Indian agriculture, it said.

Citing historical records, the report said the most severe events during the major summer monsoon were observed in 1972, 1987, 2002, 2009, 2014, and 2015. The 20-percent deficit of monsoon rainfall in 2002 resulted in billions of dollars in economic damages and affected more than a billion people, it said.

Lack of mechanisation

In India, rice farming is not highly mechanised and employs millions of agricultural workers. The report said that an ensemble of high-resolution climate change simulations have shown that extremes of wet bulb temperature in South Asia are likely to approach and, in some locations, exceed critical thresholds for worker safety by the late twenty-first century under high-emission scenarios.

The most intense risk from future heat waves is concentrated around densely populated agricultural regions of the Ganges and Indus River basins. Without further mitigation, heatwaves will become a major threat to Indian agricultural workers and rice production.

Highlighting strategies to sustain production, it said these include the use of cultivars that flower early in the morning; adjusting sowing and planting times; and breeding genetically resistant cultivars. Another possible strategy to mitigate heat stress is irrigation, which may have a surface cooling effect from local to subnational levels.

Mentioning that rice is an extremely important staple food crop in many areas of the world, the FAO-WMO joint report said the cultivation of rice is closely linked with global food security, economic growth, employment, and social stability. Rice is the main source of calories for half the global population and supplies 20 per cent of the global dietary energy.

Published on April 24, 2026