Assessing the costs of ozone pollution in India for wheat producers, consumers, and government food welfare policies
Journal article, 2023

We assess wheat yield losses occurring due to ozone pollution in India and its economic burden on producers, consumers, and the government. Applying an ozone flux-based risk assessment, we show that ambient ozone levels caused a mean 14.18% reduction in wheat yields during 2008 to 2012. Furthermore, irrigated wheat was particularly sensitive to ozone-induced yield losses, indicating that ozone pollution could undermine climate-change adaptation efforts through irrigation expansion. Applying an economic model, we examine the effects of a counterfactual, "pollution-free" scenario on yield losses, wheat prices, consumer and producer welfare, and government costs. We explore three policy scenarios in which the government support farmers at observed levels of either procurement prices (fixed-price), procurement quantities (fixed-procurement), or procurement expenditure (fixed-expenditure). In pollution-free conditions, the fixed-price scenario absorbs the fall in prices, thus increasing producer welfare by USD 2.7 billion, but total welfare decreases by USD 0.24 billion as government costs increase (USD 2.9 billion). In the fixed-procurement and fixed-expenditure scenarios, ozone mitigation allows wheat prices to fall by 38.19 to 42.96%. The producers lose by USD 5.10 to 6.01 billion, but the gains to consumers and governments (USD 8.7 to 10.2 billion) outweigh these losses. These findings show that the government and consumers primarily bear the costs of ozone pollution. For pollution mitigation to optimally benefit wheat production and maximize social welfare, new approaches to support producers other than fixed-price grain procurement may be required. We also emphasize the need to consider air pollution in programs to improve agricultural resilience to climate change.

wheat prices

air pollution

wheat production

food security

ozone-flux

Author

Divya Pandey

Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)

Katrina Sharps

UK Centre For Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)

David Simpson

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Geoscience and Remote Sensing

Norwegian Meteorological Institute

Bharat Ramaswami

Ashoka University

Roger Cremades

Wageningen University and Research

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Nathan Booth

University of York

Chubamenla Jamir

University of York

P. Buker

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

Vinayak Sinha

Indian Institute of Science

Baerbel Sinha

Indian Institute of Science

L. Emberson

University of York

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

0027-8424 (ISSN) 1091-6490 (eISSN)

Vol. 120 32

Subject Categories

Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Environmental Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2207081120

PubMed

37523550

More information

Latest update

8/9/2024 9