Global warming increases food shortages
A group of US scientists combined direct observations with 23 global climate models and found that, by 2100, there is a higher than 90 per cent chance that the lowest growing-season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than any temperatures recorded there to date. As a result, yields from primary food crops in the tropics, such as maize and rice, could drop by 20–40 per cent, with rising temperatures likely to affect soil moisture levels and cut yields even further.
Study co-author Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Food Security Program, believes the report’s findings are a ‘compelling reason for us to invest in adaptation’ because ‘it will take decades to develop new food crop varieties that can better withstand a warmer climate. We have to be rethinking agriculture systems as a whole.’
Three billion people currently live in the tropics and subtropics, in some cases representing the poorest and fastest-growing populations on the planet, and the number is expected to nearly double by the end of the century. If agriculture in these areas isn’t helped to adapt, ‘you are talking about hundreds of millions of additional people looking for food because they won’t be able to find it where they find it now’, said David Battisti, lead author of the report and a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.
‘You can let it happen and painfully adapt, or you can plan for it,’ said Battisti. ‘You also could mitigate it and not let it happen in the first place, but we’re not doing a very good job of that.’
March 2009
Study co-author Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Food Security Program, believes the report’s findings are a ‘compelling reason for us to invest in adaptation’ because ‘it will take decades to develop new food crop varieties that can better withstand a warmer climate. We have to be rethinking agriculture systems as a whole.’
Three billion people currently live in the tropics and subtropics, in some cases representing the poorest and fastest-growing populations on the planet, and the number is expected to nearly double by the end of the century. If agriculture in these areas isn’t helped to adapt, ‘you are talking about hundreds of millions of additional people looking for food because they won’t be able to find it where they find it now’, said David Battisti, lead author of the report and a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.
‘You can let it happen and painfully adapt, or you can plan for it,’ said Battisti. ‘You also could mitigate it and not let it happen in the first place, but we’re not doing a very good job of that.’
March 2009
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