Wheat and rice feed hundreds of millions of people across India — and for years, something invisible has been quietly cutting into those harvests. Coal-fired power plants supply more than 70% of India’s electricity, and many sit within miles of the country’s most productive farmland.
Most farmers working those fields have no way of seeing the connection. But the pollution drifting from plant to field may be costing far more than anyone realized.
A hidden toll on India’s staple crops
India is home to a quarter of all undernourished people globally. That makes wheat and rice yields not just an economic question but a food security one, too. Any sustained drag on those harvests carries consequences that ripple far beyond the farm gate.
Coal-fired power plants supply more than 70% of India’s electricity, placing them at the center of the country’s energy system—and, it turns out, its agricultural one too. Researchers have known for over a decade that air pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and sulfur dioxide can hurt crop yields. No study, however, had traced that damage back to a specific emissions sector.
That gap is what a Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability team set out to close. Their goal: measure the direct agricultural cost of coal electricity emissions on India’s two most critical staple crops.
How the researchers traced pollution from plant to field
The team built a statistical model drawing on three data streams: daily wind direction records, electricity generation data from 144 coal-fired power stations, and satellite measurements of nitrogen dioxide levels over cropland. By combining all three, they could track how emissions moved from a specific plant to nearby farmland — something no previous study had managed.
The results showed coal plants affect NO₂ concentrations over cropland up to 62 miles away. A larger footprint than most would expect.
The researchers focused on two key growing windows: January through February for wheat, and September through October for rice. Isolating those seasons helped them separate coal plant contributions from other NO₂ sources, including vehicle exhaust and industrial activity, both of which also produce the gas.
The $820 million annual damage
The numbers that emerged are substantial. The researchers estimated that eliminating coal emissions from farmland within 62 miles of coal plants during those growing seasons could boost rice output value by approximately $420 million per year and wheat output by around $400 million per year—more than $820 million in combined annual losses associated with coal plant NO₂ pollution.
In many parts of India, NO₂ from coal plants drags yields down by 10% or more. The regional variation is wide: in Chhattisgarh, a high-coal state, coal emissions account for 13 to 19% of regional NO₂ pollution depending on the season. In Uttar Pradesh, that figure drops to just 3 to 5%.
One finding stands out. While total crop damage value at any given station is usually lower than the mortality damage caused by that same station, crop damage per gigawatt-hour of electricity generated can actually exceed mortality damage. At 58 of the 144 stations studied, rice damage per gigawatt-hour was higher than mortality damage. For wheat, that held true at 35 stations.
Crop losses and health impacts don’t overlap—and that matters
Perhaps the most policy-relevant finding is geographic. The stations responsible for the largest crop losses are largely not the same ones linked to the highest mortality figures, with little overlap between the two groups.
That distinction matters enormously for how regulators design emission-reduction strategies. Policies built around minimizing health impacts — deaths and illness — may leave the farms suffering the worst agricultural damage almost entirely unaddressed. The two problems occupy different maps.
“The results highlight the importance of considering crop losses alongside health impacts when regulating coal electricity emissions in India,” the authors write. Benefits from targeted cuts, they argue, could be more significant and more widely distributed than previous analyses suggested.
What this means for India’s energy and food policy
The study arrives at a complicated moment. India faces rising electricity demand, coal remains the backbone of its power grid, and food security pressures show no sign of easing.
The researchers argue that energy policy, air quality regulation, and food security cannot be treated as separate problems. “Any policy focused on reducing emissions from coal power plants in India will be ignoring a crucial part of the problem if it does not consider the damages from air pollution to agriculture,” said co-author Inês Azevedo.
Lead author Kirat Singh put the opportunity plainly: well-targeted emission cuts could deliver thousands of dollars of increased crop output for each clean gigawatt-hour generated—on top of climate and health benefits. As India continues to weigh its energy future, studies like this one may push policymakers to ask a question they have rarely considered: what does coal electricity actually cost the people growing the country’s food?
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
