India’s wheat farmers count cost of 40C heat that evokes ‘deserts of Rajasthan’

The ban on wheat exports highlights the effect a rapidly warming planet has on food security - and livelihoods

It was his buffaloes that he was first worried about. As temperatures in the small village of Baras, deep in the Indian state of Punjab, began to soar to unseasonably hot levels in April, farmer Hardeep Singh Uppal noticed that his two buffaloes, essential for his family's livelihood, became feverish and unwell.

A few weeks later and the buffaloes now seem fine, flicking their tails leisurely as an icy breeze blows down from an air conditioning unit, a luxury that once sat in Uppal's parents house but now has been installed in an otherwise run-down cowshed, running all day at great expense. The vet told me I need to keep them cool in this heatwave otherwise they will die so this is the only way," said Uppal.