Climate change is undermining the very agricultural systems that ensured India's food security. Discuss with reference to the dairy sector.

India's White Revolution made it the world's largest milk producer — 247.87 million tonnes in 2024-25, about a quarter of global output [1]. Rising heat is now eroding this very base of protein and rural income security.

Climate stress on the agricultural base

• Government assessments confirm rising temperatures, erratic monsoons and extreme events are depressing crop yields and farm incomes [2].
• Livestock, long the buffer against crop failure, is losing that shock-absorber role as the same warming hits animals directly.

How warming hits the dairy sector

• Heat stress physiology: lactating animals divert metabolic energy from milk synthesis to thermoregulation and cut feed intake; high-yielding animals suffer sustained milk yield losses of 10–30% under thermal stress [3].
• Trans-Gangetic belt at risk: research on Haryana's Murrah buffalo system finds milk yield, conception rates, feed availability and water resources are the most climate-sensitive indicators [4].
• Compounding stressors: fodder scarcity, water shortage and wider spread of vector-borne disease raise input costs [4].
• Feedback loop: livestock is itself a major methane source, so the sector both drives and absorbs climate damage [3].

Food security and livelihood consequences

• Milk is the cheapest animal protein for poor households; per capita availability of 485 g/day is at stake [1].
• Smallholders and landless dairy farmers, lacking cooling sheds or insurance, bear losses disproportionately, weakening the supplementary income that sustains rural households.

Building climate resilience

• Rashtriya Gokul Mission conserves indigenous breeds valued precisely for heat tolerance and disease resistance — a genetic adaptation lever [5].
• NMSA under NAPCC integrates crop-livestock farming systems for climate resilience [6]; scaling shade and misting infrastructure, fodder banks and heat-advisory extension can operationalise it.

Climate change is thus converting India's dairy strength into a vulnerability. Mainstreaming heat-resilient breeding, fodder security and cooling infrastructure into livestock extension can protect both nutrition and rural incomes, aligning with SDG-2 on zero hunger and safeguarding the food-security gains the White Revolution delivered.