Global warming has hit agricultural productivity, particularly wheat production in the country, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said today."The warmth of the last half-century is unusual," he said delivering the keynote address at the 4th International Conference on Environmental Education being held at the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) here."In the case of India, we have observed some impact like the increase of 0.68 degree celsius in temperature," Pachauri said while explaining how temperatures in the country have risen in recent times."The warming of land area has been more pronounced in post-monsoon and winter period," the IPCC head, who recently shared the Noble Peace Prize with Al Gore, said. "This has a very serious effect on agriculture," he added."Agriculture productivity, particularly of wheat, has shown signs of going down as a result of the climate change," Pachauri said.Pachauri said production of wheat has fallen by 5-10% in the country. "If we look at this in the global context, there are issues of food security that we need to be concerned about," he added.India has been forced to import wheat from countries like Australia due to the increasing supply-demand gap."Temperatures have increased in recent years. The earth is warming at a faster pace than at any time that we can think of in the past couple of generations," Pachauri said. "Clearly, there is a lot to worry about," he said.
