That's got to hurt - right in the breadbasket
Although somewhat dry and relying almost entirely on figures and maps, this video expresses what I take to be one of the key issues relating to climate change, namely, its likely impact on food production (and from there, on geopolitical stability and conflict). If you can't spare the few minutes to watch it, the key take-home message is that pretty much all of the world's main grain-producing areas lie in regions likely to be particularly susceptible to more intense and/or frequent heatwaves. This must be taken with a grain of salt, since the regional resolution of cilmate models does not have a high degree of confidence. Nonetheless, even the significant possibility of such an outcome can help to focus the mind.
Posts
10 comments:
I think it is important to note that the only places he considers are today's breadbaskets. Temperature increases will obviously make high latitudes better (Canada, Russia, Tasmania!), and I expect they will become the breadbaskets of the future. I'm not saying the net production won't get worse, I don't know. I'm just saying that if you only look at the places which are currently enjoying the optimal conditions, you are guaranteed to get a negative result.
Unfortunately, while there may be some small areas of suitable land in higher latitudes that are currently held back primarily by temperatures, in most cases (especially in northern Canada and Siberia), the soils are too acidic (or rocky) to be much use.
Isn't that because pine needles keep falling on the soil? As other species migrate north, their mulch will presumably make for better soils. I realize this may be a slow process, but perhaps it won't lag the warming by far?
Pine needles in some areas, peaty mosses in others. As I understand it, natural rates of change in soil pH from migrating species are likely to be a fraction of the rate of change of the climate. The frozen tundra and boreal forests are not going to become breadbaskets in anything like the timescale required. (Indeed, in both cases, they will not become so without first releasing enormous amounts of carbon as boreal forests and especially permafrost are major carbon stores, so hoping for them to change into some other habitat more conducive to farming is to wish further destruction upon ourselves.)
Hi Byron,
You may have already come across Olivier De Schutter, UN's Special Rapporteur on the right to food. This article is quite interesting - http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/971
Chris
The Conversation: Australia's role in Africa's food future. I thought the opening paragraphs were a good summary of the scale of the task we face in coming decades.
SciAm: Fighting food insecurity.
SciAm: Farmed out. How will climate change affect world food supplies?
Global food security index. Gives a basic idea of which countries are most vulnerable to food price spikes.
PLOS One: Yield trends are insufficient to double global crop production by 2050. No kidding.
Guardian: Food growth slowing.
Post a Comment