Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Do Floods Affect Cropping Intensity? Evidence from a Flood Prone District in Assam, India

Abstract

Empirical studies that have recently built up in stock particularly with the growing awareness about the climate change since the 1970s show that people’s agricultural activities are disastrously affected, among others, by natural calamities of which floods are the most common hazards that the farming populations in particular have ever confronted with across the world. Their adverse effects are further expected to escalate with the present pace of global climate change, making it necessary to devise suitable adaptation measures for sustainable agriculture. Given these premises, the present study based in one frequently flood hit district of Dhemaji in the state of Assam, India, makes an attempt to examine whether cropping intensity of the cultivator households is affected by their flood proneness. Ordinary least square estimation result shows that the cultivator households in flood prone areas have statistically higher cropping intensity compared to the flood free households. This, however, does not in any way predict higher agricultural production or productivity by the flood prone farmers. The results, on the contrary, implicitly prescribe for a comprehensive agricultural policy particularly designed for flood prone areas, enveloping strategies but not limited to suitable irrigation infrastructure, mass awareness for productive agricultural practices, subsidised seeds and other inputs, and post harvest agriculture infrastructures including marketing facilities.