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People buy groceries at a market in Karachi, Pakistan. The shortage in supplies in Pakistan was triggered by monsoon floods last year that submerged nearly a third of the country. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 12:00pm, 15 Jul 2023

Indian farmer Sandeep Babar has been scanning the skies in recent days for the heavy, black monsoon clouds that signal the start of the summer crop-planting season at his five-acre farm in the western state of Maharashtra, but the weather gods have so far disappointed him.

“We have not even had enough rain to cause a puddle on the roads or in our fields,” Babar said. “I am worried that the monsoon will be too late, and when it does come, there will be such an intense cloudburst that it will damage our crops when we sow them.”

Like millions of farmers across India, Babar has come to expect such erratic monsoon weather because of climate change. But the onset of El Nino, a weather phenomenon that results in more hotter, drier spells, has only worsened conditions.

Monsoon rains arrived over the Indian subcontinent on June 8, their longest delay in more than four years. Yet the late arrival of the rains has not unsettled farmers as much as their uneven distribution, with parts of western India still parched even as flash floods have hit the north.

Farmers work in a paddy field on the outskirts of Guwahati in India. The late arrival of rains this year has not unsettled farmers as much as their uneven distribution. Photo: AP

Meanwhile, the disturbing weather pattern has engulfed the rest of Asia as well.