Climate change may force India to import corn

Washington: Scientists have claimed that India and China, Asia's largest corn producers, will experience severe dry conditions due to climate change, prompting them to import corn from Tanzania which would face comparatively wet weather.

Researchers from Stanford University, the World Bank and Purdue University found that in the years countries such as India, China and the US are forecast to experience severe dry conditions, Tanzania's weather will likely be comparatively wet.

The African country better known for safaris and Mt Kilimanjaro can substantially increase its maize exports due to predicted dry and hot weather that could affect other countries' usual sources for the crop.

The authors began by analysing historical years in which Tanzania experienced grains surpluses or deficits.

The authors then attempted to predict how often Tanzania and key trading partners will experience severely dry years in response to continued global warming.

They predicted that during an average of 96 per cent of the years the US and China are predicted to have extremely dry conditions, Tanzania will not experience similarly dry weather.

For India, that percentage increases to 97 per cent, the researchers said in a statement.

The study was published in the Review of Development Economics.

"This study highlights how government policies can influence the impact that we experience from the climate system," said study co-author Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor from Stanford's School of Earth Sciences.

"Tanzania is a particularly interesting case, as it has the potential to benefit from climate change if climate model predictions of decreasing drought in East Africa prove to be correct, and if trade policies are constructed to take advantage of those new opportunities," Diffenbaugh said.

The study used economic, climatic and agricultural data and computational models to suggest that Tanzania is likely to have adequate growing season moisture in most of the years that its key African trading partners experience severe dry weather.