Tradeoffs between crop yield, agricultural residue burning, and groundwater depletion in India's wheat belt

Meha Jain, Victor Prudente, Weiqi Zhou, Monish Deshpande, Nishan Bhattarai, Asif Ishtiaque, Himanshu Pathak, Balwinder Singh

Wheat is a staple crop in India, but yields have stagnated and are projected to further
decline due to climate change. One way to increase yields is to ensure timely sowing, which
allows the crop to mature prior to damaging heat stress at the end of the growing season. Using
novel satellite data products that we developed along with a unique village-level dataset that we
collated across India's main wheat belt, the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP), we examine the extent of
late sowing, its drivers, and the potential tradeoffs of earlier wheat sowing on yield and
sustainability outcomes. We find that sowing dates are largely delayed in the eastern IGP, and
this is primarily driven by delayed transplanting of the previous rice crop, reduced access to
groundwater irrigation, and delayed monsoon onset. Considering tradeoffs, we find that early
wheat sowing is associated with higher yields across the IGP, but also with increased
groundwater depletion in the western IGP and increased rice residue burning across most of the
IGP. We use these results along with maps of where rice residue burning is occurring and where
groundwater is over-exploited to identify location-specific interventions that can enhance early
wheat sowing sustainably across the IGP. Such actionable information can be used by policymakers
and practitioners to promote the most effective interventions that simultaneously enhance
early wheat sowing, increased wheat yields, and environmental sustainability in the world's most
populous nation.