Sugarcane powers India’s rural economy but climate change is affecting yield

Sugarcane cultivation across parts of India’s Deccan Plateau is becoming more productive. But, it is also becoming more vulnerable to climate variability, a new long-term study finds.

Sugarcane has long shaped India’s rural economy. It powers sugar mills, supports ethanol and bioenergy production, and sustains millions of farmers. But the crop is also at the centre of mounting concerns over water use, particularly in semi-arid regions facing recurrent droughts and groundwater stress.

The study analysed 22 years of sugarcane production trends across five districts in Maharashtra and Karnataka to understand how cultivation, yields and production patterns have changed under varying climatic conditions.

“We noticed that sugarcane cultivation in Maharashtra and Karnataka was increasingly being affected by climatic variability, even though it remains one of the most important economic activities across the Deccan Plateau,” says Krishna Kumar from the Department of Applied Science and Humanities at MIT-ADT University, Pune, and one of the study’s researchers.

Across climate zones

Sugarcane production trends in India have been studied extensively at national and state levels, but long-term district-level analyses incorporating weather variability remain limited.

“The main concern was to pin down how climate variability impacts agricultural production in water-limited sugarcane systems,” adds Kumar. “This kind of insight matters a lot for creating climate resilient agricultural policies and...

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