The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned of the likelihood of climate change leading to a hunger crisis in India.

FAO says floods and droughts caused by climate changes would affect food grain production by almost 125 million tonnes or 18 per cent of the current food grain produced in the country.

Jacques Diouf, director general, FAO, was quoted in an official statement as saying that greater frequency of droughts and floods would have a negative impact on local production, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes. "Rain-fed agriculture in marginal areas in semi-arid and sub-humid regions is mostly at risk," he warned.

Industrialised countries, however, are likely to benefit from these climate changes, as, "Crop yield potential is likely to increase at higher latitudes for global average temperature increases of up to 1 to 3 degree centigrade depending on the crop and then decrease beyond that," the statement said.

"On the contrary, at lower latitudes, especially in the seasonally dry tropics, crop yield potential is likely to decline for even small global temperature rises, which would increase the risk of hunger," the director general said.

Diouf said that science and technology must spearhead agricultural production in the next 30 years at a pace faster than the green revolution did during the past three decades. He
advocated the use of biotech technologies such as in-vitro culture, embryo transfer and the DNA markers can be exploited to supplement conventional breeding approaches to enhance yield levels, increase input use efficiency, reduce risk and boost the nutritional quality of grains.

However, he pointed out that development of GM crops which are resistant to climate change conditions such as drought, extreme temperatures, soil acidity and salinity — something which poor farmers would need to defend against — is yet a far cry.

Diouf said the scientific community today faces challenge to ensure that new biotechnologies help achieve this goal while taking care of the issues of bio-safety, socio economic and ethical concerns associated with the use of some of these technologies