Climate change: Impact on agricultural production and sustainable mitigation

Abstract The agricultural is an important sector and shares a major fraction of any nations’ gross national product and, thus, has a key role in the development. Due to the green revolution, crop production has increased to a greater extent in the past decades and simulated to be continued in the coming years. But, at present, one of the challenging issues is food security and maintaining the equitable standard of living for the coming generations. In this regard, one of the major global environmental issues in front of us is human-induced climate change, which threatens our ability to meet the demand. In the past decades, the high growth rate of industrialization, urbanization, and anthropogenic activities has resulted in adverse climate changes, significantly affecting the global temperature, increased greenhouse gases, seasonal variation, and irregular precipitation patterns. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global warming prediction report, the global mean temperature will be increased by 1.0–3.5°C by 2100, and CO2 doubling would be increased temperature by 1.5–4.5°C. Global mean surface temperature anomalies were also recorded to be increasing consistently with time since 1880 to the year 2019; 2016 ranks as the warmest on record (NASA GISS). Thus, increase in temperature and CO2 can be a big challenge in front of farmers and result in a major threat to agriculture and food security. It has the potential to affect agriculture positively as well as negatively in terms of yield, depending upon the variations in various factors. The share of agriculture in global emissions, the need for further global mitigation efforts, and continued projected agricultural emissions growth in many countries all combined together to underline the necessity for stronger and more effective policies. Thus, this chapter is focused on the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector and strategies for mitigating climate change in the agriculture system. In this context, there is an urgent need to analyze the impact of climate change on agriculture productivity and project sustainable approaches to adapt the climate change and meet the future food demand.