Navigating food security in India: unravelling the interplay of climatic and non-climatic factors

Adequate access to nutritious food is essential for human health and well-being. However, attaining food security has become a grave concern due to increasing population and climate change vulnerabilities. Recently, several studies around the globe have indicated that climate change is likely to impact food security. Studies also show that some non-climatic factors are crucial in determining food security. The present study, therefore, investigates the nexus between food security and non-climatic and climatic factors in the context of India. This paper has considered both climatic factors (temperature, precipitation, and carbon emissions) and non-climatic factors (land and electricity used in the agriculture sector) as explanatory variables, whereas the crop production index is considered a proxy for food security. The “autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL)” model has been used to assess the variables' short- and long-run association by considering the time range from 1990 to 2020. The outcome of the estimation indicates that precipitation, carbon emissions, land, and electricity significantly impact food security in both the short and long run. However, the impact of temperature on food security is insignificantly negative in the short run and positive in the long run. This study thus suggests that the government should develop and implement comprehensive policies to promote sustainable agriculture practices to improve the country's food security level.