The Annual Patterns Farmers Have Trusted for Generations Suddenly Change Unpredictably
Yves here. We discussed how the onset of a super El Nino will reduce agricultural production, as there will be widespread fertilizer shortages and high diesel prices. These adverse changes come against the backdrop of climate change that is changing the way farmers rely on them to decide when to plant and when to harvest, harming farm productivity.
By Sanket Jain, an award-winning freelance journalist and documentary photographer based in the state of Maharashtra in Western India. His work has been featured in more than 35 publications, including MIT Technology Review, Devex, Wired, Telegraph, Thomson Reuters Foundation, The Nation, British Medical Journal, Verge, USA Today, Progressive Magazine, and others. He has won more than 15 journalism awards. Read his stories at www.sanketjain.in. Originally published at Yale Climate Connections
The farmers of Jambhali, a village with a population of five thousand in western India, have turned to 80-year-old Satgonda Patil for advice on when not to plant or when to harvest their crops. For more than six decades, his deep knowledge and mysterious nature helped him and his neighbors succeed and avoid weather-related losses.
That started to change about five years ago. The rains came late, they came early. Summer was long, and insects appeared at odd times. Financial losses soon followed.
In October 2025, Patil planted cauliflower in his 1.5 acre field, but could not harvest the crop. It wilted due to a soil-borne fungal disease favored by warm temperatures. A month later, Patil tried to plant cabbage, but the insects arrived early and spread quickly. He spent more than 50,000 Indian rupees ($527) on pesticides but could not save the crop.
The problem, says Patil, is no longer just one bad season.
“Like temperatures are increasing every year, as are insect infestations.” “No matter how much I spray, these insects don’t go away.”
Patil has many companies around the world.
Climate change has disrupted the seasonal patterns that generations of farmers have relied on. They have tried to adapt by using new irrigation methods, changing crops, or adjusting planting time. However, losses are increasing. One study projects that adaptation can only mitigate about 23% of the expected global crop loss in 2050 and 34% by the end of the century.
For every 1°C increase in global temperature, food production is expected to decrease enough to reduce the average available food supply by about 120 calories per person per day, about 4.4% of the recommended caloric intake. Today, agriculture around the world produces enough food, but this supply is unevenly distributed due to income inequality, price volatility, and gaps in access to infrastructure, leaving many undernourished.
Even a small decrease in productivity can increase the level of food insecurity. Although the Paris Agreement aims to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, current policy options put the world at risk of warming above 2°C this century, levels at which these losses will increase significantly.
Warming Oceans Mess Up Rainfall Patterns
Climate change is changing the patterns that once made the seasons predictable. Another study published in the journal Nature Communications found that links between ocean temperatures and rainfall are variable, making seasonal forecasts less reliable in some regions.
Unlike the land and the air, which respond quickly to daily temperature changes, the ocean captures and stores heat for a long time, releasing it slowly, explains Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and senior author of the study. The ocean has a kind of “memory” that allows conditions such as El Niño and La Niña, natural cycles of warming and warming of the ocean in the Pacific, to influence the circulation of the atmosphere and, in turn, set the rainfall patterns in many regions, he added.
“The historical relationships that we rely on to predict the season may not continue in the same way,” he said.
In some regions, forecasts may improve as weather signals become clearer.
“Forecasting systems will need to be continuously updated to keep up with these changing conditions,” he added.
Researchers have begun to map the seasonal pattern of rainfall in different parts of the world.
“Another notable effect is the decrease in predictability in northern Amazonia during the Northern Hemisphere winter, when seasonal rainfall becomes more difficult to predict,” said Phong Le, a scientist at the Department of Environmental Sciences at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, who led the study. In contrast, the forecast is expected to increase in most tropical areas in a few seasons.
Climate change also changes the timing of seasonal events. A study published in Science shows that these times can change differently in all species, throwing natural interactions out of sync and often creating unexpected results.
“Even small shifts in seasonal events, such as floods arriving a week earlier, can have a negative impact on the environment,” said Jonathan Tonkin, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and senior author of the study. Because species are closely related, changes in timing can affect entire systems: “Ecological systems are highly interconnected systems, and changes in any one member can permeate the entire system.”
When Nothing Works
Patil said the signs of the season he had hoped for no longer made sense.
“Sometimes it feels like it’s going to rain,” he said. “The next moment, it’s on fire. It’s unexpected.”
As we were talking about March, as temperatures passed 38°C (100.4°F), the television showed a forecast of evening rain. Leaning on his walking stick, he walked towards the millet field at a distance of one hundred meters.
“If it rains for even 10 minutes, I will lose everything,” he said, inspecting the ready-to-harvest crop that could be damaged by even a light shower. Fortunately, the forecast was wrong. It didn’t rain.
Farmer Yallappa Naik, 68, from Nandani village in western India, did what farmers are told to do when one crop fails: Try again.
In June 2023, he planted sugarcane, following the calendar he had been using for decades. Then it started to rain heavily.
“The water was at least seven meters deep in the field for more than 10 days,” he said.
Nothing survived.
He also tried millet, wheat, and vegetables. Those plants withered in the extreme heat, rotted in the premature rain, or were eaten by insects he had never seen before.
In October 2024, he sowed millet. By March, most of that crop had failed. The weed spread quickly, even after three removals.
He said: “Five decades ago, I had never seen so many weeds.
He lost $316 that season.
Naik is not alone. Research shows that climate change is causing the Indian monsoon to fluctuate, with extreme swings between long periods of drought and heavy rain.
“In recent decades, India’s summer rainfall appears to be less than it used to be,” said Hamza Varikoden, a senior scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, who led the monsoon research.
Instead of bringing heavy rainfall throughout the season, the monsoon in South Asia is increasingly characterized by short bursts of heavy rain followed by long dry spells, he said. Even if the total rainfall remains the same, each season can bring unpredictable fluctuations between floods and droughts.
“The seasonal patterns that farmers rely on are becoming increasingly unpredictable, making agricultural planning even more challenging,” said Catherine George, a doctoral researcher at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany.
Climate change is a major cause of climate change. The atmosphere can hold 6-10% more moisture for every 1°C of warming, leading to greater rainfall. Climate models suggest that although total rainfall may increase in the future, it may come with greater variability and extreme events, Varikoden said.
Adapting Under Constraints
Naik has now reduced his cultivation to a three-month window.
He says that for most of the year, the extreme weather makes it dangerous to grow crops.
So instead of growing crops that take six months or more to mature, he is now focusing on short-growing crops, such as beets.
“It reduces the risk of loss to a certain extent,” he said.
Experts say the solution to climate change lies not only in better forecasts, but in rethinking how to prepare for the worst.
This could mean adjusting sowing dates based on updated forecasts, choosing plant varieties that can withstand heat or short drying, and different crops to reduce risk, said Ancy Pushpaleela, a researcher at Cochin University of Science and Technology in India.
In addition, farmers can better cope with uneven rainfall by conserving water, conserving soil moisture, and using irrigation efficiently during dry periods, Pushpaleela added. Effective groundwater management can also help prevent drought and heavy rains.
“The aim is to move from relying on accurate predictions to risk management, so that communities are better prepared for a wider range of possible outcomes,” said Foufoula-Georgiou.
But for Patil, an 80-year-old farmer from Jambhali, the loss is not just money. The erosion of the system he spent his entire life studying. He remembered that there was a time when the harvest was so abundant that there was not enough room in the house to store the grain.
Now, he says, even eating enough twice a day feels like enough.
