New research highlights the challenge of cultivating food on the planet of warming.
Two recent-historical studies and other aspecting appearance-the extent of high temperatures can continue to make agricultural production less efficient, and mainly reshape the global diet as producers try to adapt to the hotter growth seasons.
The results illuminate the connection that farmers and consumers find themselves. Agricultural production is an engine for climate change; It is estimated that you are responsible for Somewhere between a quarter and Trick One of the global greenhouse gas emissions. But changes in the weather changes associated with climate change. While producers are struggling to harvest the same amounts of food in the face of drought, thermal waves and hurricanes, shoppers are likely to face food prices.
the Approx studyIt was published on June 18 in nature, analyzes the effect of warming temperatures on the caloric product of agricultural production. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana Chambine and Stanford Dyouir School for Sustainability have found that for each additional degree of warming above the average of 2000-2010, the global diet will produce about 120 calories per person per day.
In a scenario where the Earth faces 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, this is the equivalent of everyone on this missing planet for breakfast, said Andrew Hultgar, author of the study.
Hultgren and his colleagues collected a huge data collection on the production of six basic crops in more than 12,000 regions distributed over 54 countries. Then they mixed with how different warming scenarios could affect crop production; They also took into account how farmers around the world adapt to higher temperatures. Holtger, an assistant professor of agricultural economy and consumer economy at the University of Illinois Urbana Chambine, said that what, even with adaptation, is linked to global warming with “almost a linear decline in the product of calories.”
Holtger said that the measurement of agricultural adaptation and its impact on production is important, because research often assumes that farmers either perfectly adapt to global warming or not at all. The fact is that adapting to any challenges in the increasing season comes at a cost, and farmers are constantly estimating commercial benefits to implement new technologies.
For example, one of the tools that corn farmers in the Middle West in the United States must prevent hot days from thwarting their harvest Cultivation of crop varieties that ripen relatively. “The atom is very sensitive to extreme heat, so it can be a very bad day in the return of the entire growth season,” said Holtger.
But Holtagern is that the fast varieties that are appropriate for low returns, which means that these farmers are likely not to sell the most corn as they will have in the cooler weather conditions. “So there is literally the cost of avoiding that severe heat,” he said.
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The decrease in the global supply of crops will increase food prices. But Hultgren indicated that the effects of low agricultural production will not be distributed evenly. In the wealthiest countries like the United States, for example, it is possible that those who can bear the high cost of food prices. In poor countries, these transformations can lead to poor food wish.
In addition, high temperatures will affect the producers unevenly; The study estimated that in a high -resolution climate scenario, corn farmers in the United States will face 40 to 50 percent losses on the return by the end of the century. Based on these expectations, “You are wondering whether the corn belt is still the corn belt,” said Holden. Meanwhile, other regional producers – such as rice farmers in southern and Southeast Asia – will see the returns grow in the same time frame. He said: “There are regional winners and losers at all in this global assembly.”
the Historical study,, Which was published on June 20 in the natural land sciences, sees one of the ways in which agricultural production contributes to the phenomenon of global warming: land cleansing. When farmers want to grow new agricultural lands, they often start removing plants that are already growing there, whether it is grass, shrubs or trees. When land cleansing occurs in carbon -rich areas in the global south, such as the Amazon rain forests, it increases the removal of forests and carbon emissions, said Jessica Tel, the co -author of the study.
“The removal of forests in tropical areas is one of the most urgent and largest issues,” said Tel, research scientist at the University of Illinois Champin. (Till and Hultgren did not participate in each other’s studies. “The more the land on which the land is increased, the more the forests that remove it to create crop lands will have a negative impact on the climate.”
Other study authors have examined this feedback ring between agriculture and the environment: when crop production becomes less efficient due to severe weather and heat, farmers must get more lands to increase production. This expansion in crop lands and in turn leads to high greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbates warming and makes crop production less efficient.
They found that even with improvements in agricultural productivity (due to technological improvements such as new seed items and accurate fertilizers), climate change was responsible for 88 million hectares, or 217 million acres, in the expansion of crop lands worldwide – a region about twice the size of California – between 1992 and 2020.
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They also decided that this expansion was led by senior agricultural producers, including the United States, India, China, Russia and Brazil. It is not surprising, that these countries were also the five highest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions caused by climate -based expansion in crop lands.
Till and Hultgren noticed that these transformations can also affect global trade. When certain areas see a decrease in agricultural productivity, she said even, other areas will get a competitive advantage in the international market for agricultural commodities.
Erwan Moner, co -director of the Climate Climate Research Center at the University of California Devis, said he was not surprised by the results of any of the studies, and said they contributed to the increasing research set on climate effects on agriculture.
But he added that both of them come with warnings. Munir indicated that the study of nature on the caloric product fails to consider possible future developments in technologies such as genetic liberation, which can make crops more flexible for climate change. He said that the paper explains that “in order to reduce the effect of the climate on our ability to grow food, we will need a scale of innovation and a really large adaptation, and this will be a real challenge.”
In reference to the nature of geophysical science on the elastic feeding ring between agriculture and climate, Munir said that it does not take into account how farmer’s behavior can change in response to global warming.
“The truth is that we have the ability to change what is growing,” Monir said. In the United States, for example, where corn production and soybeans prevail, farmers can choose to grow different crops if they see returns that are constantly falling. Munir said that these farmers will not continue to grow corn with very low returns and invest more capital and land with very low returns. “
Munir acknowledged that the last study may encounter it as very pessimistic. But he said he emphasizes the importance of difficult conversations now on how to grow enough food to feed the world’s population with high temperatures.
He said that in order to avoid dangerous losses in agricultural production, researchers and institutions in the climate must work alongside farmers, helping them to understand the risks of global warming and search for new ways to adapt. Munir said that this work should be “from bottom to top”, instead of “from top to bottom.” “We need to involve people who will already develop food.”
He added that this will include work that exceeds the academic field. “I don’t know if the post in Nature and Nature Geoscience is the way to lead adaptation from bottom to top on the necessary scale.”
