Climatic hazards and agricultural development: some aspects of the problem in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent

The world’s second largest concentration of demand for food grains to be directly consumed by humans; second, that is, to China. Demographic statistics are a very crude way to define the food picture and wellbeing of civil societies. Yet, if people consume mainly vegetable matter, there is a fair correlation between numbers of mouths and baseline food requirements. In the subcontinent, food supply for a large fraction of people does lie close to the nutritional minimum. Following some initial turmoil and recession after departure of the British, food production has shown a general increase throughout the region. In India since 1950 and Pakistan since 1955 it has risen, on the average, slightly faster than population. For the subcontinent as a whole, floods and droughts are overwhelmingly the largest dangers to food production. Nevertheless, the details of weather impacts on farming have the same diversity as the many habitats, crops and agricultural systems involved.