Extreme Weather Events in Chhattisgarh State affecting CROP Production : Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies

Abstract

Extreme weather, in the most obvious sense, is weather that lies outside a locale’s normal range of weather intensity. Here, in this paper an attempt has been made to study extreme weather events induced stress particularly with reference to rice based production system for Chhattisgarh state where rice based cropping system is pre-dominant. An effort has been made to study extreme events like drought and dry spells, flooding and wet spells, heat waves, cold waves and hail storms etc. When these extremes exceed the tolerance limits, the impact can be severe in terms of production and farm economics. Dry spell / drought impact can be mitigated by indigenous water harvesting structures, RCC, OFR and local traditional techniques like trenching, indigenous drip method and the benefit attained by farmers have been explained through case studies. Adaptation and mitigation strategies fecommended against flooding are indigenous broad bed furrow maker through tractor as crop management technique and secondary reservoir techniques. Impact of some weather aberrations like hailstorms, cold wave, heat wave and dust storms on crops and animals have also been documented.