Bhubaneswar: As the world battles the consequences of human-induced emissions, a recent study has shed light on the severe impact of coal emissions on India’s crop production, particularly affecting staple grains like rice and wheat.

Conducted by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the study highlights how coal-generated pollution significantly hampers agricultural productivity. Coal accounts for 30-40% of India’s anthropogenic Nitrous Oxide (NO) emissions, prompting researchers to focus on its impact on crop yields.

The findings come amid India’s ongoing reliance on coal for power generation. The Energy Statistics Report 2024, released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), confirms that coal will continue to be a dominant energy source in the country. While the world is rapidly transitioning towards renewable energy, reducing dependency on coal remains a formidable challenge for India.

Air pollution has long been recognized as a key factor behind declining agricultural yields, but coal emissions, particularly Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), have emerged as a major threat. Lead author of the study, Kirat Singh, emphasized the importance of understanding this link. “We wanted to assess the impact of India’s coal electricity emissions on its agriculture because there might be real trade-offs between meeting growing electricity demand with coal generation and maintaining food security,” Singh explained.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study reveals that coal emissions can negatively affect crop yields up to 100 km from power plants. The impact is most pronounced in regions like West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, where NO2 exposure has caused annual yield losses exceeding 10%. This reduction is equivalent to nearly six years’ worth of average annual yield growth in rice and wheat between 2011 and 2020.

The damage caused by NO2 is twofold. Directly, it interferes with essential plant enzymes, acting as a phytotoxic agent. Indirectly, it contributes to ozone formation and leads to the development of particulate matter (PM), both of which are known to suppress crop yields. Globally, relative yield losses for wheat and rice due to such pollutants range between 7-12% and 3-4%, respectively.

The study suggests that relocating coal plants away from agricultural zones could significantly boost crop output, with potential annual gains of $420 million for rice and $400 million for wheat.

Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment Director, David Lobell, underscored the significance of these findings. “It’s rare to find a single factor – in this case, reducing coal emissions – that could benefit agriculture so quickly and so substantially,” he said.

[Disclaimer: This story is a part of ‘Punascha Pruthibi – One Earth. Unite for It’, an awareness campaign by Sambad Digital.]