GLOBAL WARMING TO AFFECT RICE PRODUCE
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences (NAC) have predicted global warming to having a negative impact on farm yields in the next century, thereby leading to food scarcity. Rice crop, studies reveal will be particularly affected since it is vulnerable to warm conditions and its production will decline by almost 10 per cent with every two-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature during the harvesting season. Global rice market estimates point out that despite the grain harvest of two billion in the previous year, the demand couldn’t be met, as the crop withered under severe heat in India, Europe as well as in the US. The United Nations has also predicted that having risen by one degree in past three decades, the earth’s average temperature is expected to increase by an additional two degrees.