Summer 2008 Climate Alert
Climate Change & Food Security [ PDF ]
In this Newsletter:
Climate Change & Food Security
For the past two years, the world
has been experiencing what has
been termed a “food crisis” as a
combination of factors have converged
to create dramatic increases in food
price and, for some, dire food scarcities.
The results have been various:
- In the United States, worries over inflation have come to dominate the political debate in a presidential election year.
- More than 14 countries saw rioting and demonstrations over food prices. In Haiti, where some were reduced to eating mud cakes in a desperate effort to stave off hunger, civil unrest eventually forced the President’s resignation and threatened to plunge the country into anarchy.
- Throughout the world, confidence in our still immature globalized trade system was tested as several governments including India, Vietnam, Egypt, and Cambodia sought to ban or limit grain exports.
- As high prices undercut the buying power of fixed budgets, global aid and development organizations were forced to watch the reversal of hardwon progress toward reducing malnutrition and meeting Millennium Development Goals.
The causes for the crisis are multiple; many of them have almost nothing to do with climate change, including high oil prices, a weak dollar, speculative investment, population growth, and changing diets.
However, some factors are related to
climate change, most notably a series
of weather events (including a six
year drought in Australia, a typhoon
in Burma and flooding in America’s
Midwest) that diminished grain stocks
and led to greater price uncertainty.
While no single weather event can be
attributed to climate change, each one
of these occurrences is indicative of
the types of meteorological adversity
that should be expected to happen with
increased frequency in a global warming
scenario.
Climate change has also played
another, less direct role in the food crisis
by fueling apprehensions about the
effects of greenhouse gas emissions.
This, in turn, has helped to drive the
push for the production of more biofuels.
As energy crops compete with
foodcrops they inevitably cut into
food inventories and drive up prices.
Corn ethanol, with its especially high
input requirements, has done the
most to diminish foodstocks: one gas
tank’s worth of ethanol fuel requires
an amount of corn that could feed one
person for an entire year. Many question
the morality of using food for fuel
when other technologies are available
to satisfy the demand for energy without
contributing to global hunger.
These trends show no signs of abating,
and it seems very likely that in the
future, climate change will increasingly
diminish food security and widen
the gap between the rich and the poor.
Preventing a deepening food crisis and
lessening the potential for wider social
and geopolitical unrest will require
swift action to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, policies to protect the
millions of people facing poverty and
hunger, and changes to agricultural
practices worldwide.
This task will be complicated by
the fact that food production is not
only a victim of climate change, but
also a culprit in its emergence. While
agriculture will be forced to adapt to
challenges involving new soil conditions,
weather patterns and water
availability scenarios, there is pressure
to find ways to mitigate its extensive
contribution to greenhouse warming.
Currently, agriculture contributes 12%
of global greenhouse gas emissions.
However, this figure does not include
greenhouse gases from deforestation
or nitrogen fertilizer production, which
are counted under ‘industry.’ Greenhouse
gas emissions from all facets of
agriculture may total closer to 25-30%
of all emissions, and this percentage
is likely to rise with an increasing
demand for food.
In order to guarantee food security, agriculture must adapt to yield reductions from floods, droughts and rising temperatures, while at the same time addressing its contributions to global climate change.
Current agricultural practices require
large amounts of oil to produce the
chemical fertilizers necessary to grow
crops, run the factories to process grain
into packaged foods, and fuel the trucks
and airplanes to transport food across
the world. Even before adding the fuelnecessary to ship food from factory to
consumer, “the food-processing industry
in the United States uses about ten calories
of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie
of food energy it produces.” Global
nitrogen fertilizer consumption in 2005
was 90.86 million tons, the production
of which required as many tons of fossil
fuel. As oil prices increase, the cost of
maintaining industrial agriculture rises,
thereby driving food prices upward.
The consequences of agriculture’s contribution to climate change, and of climate change’s negative impact on agriculture, are severe. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports with high confidence that climate change is increasing the number of people at risk of hunger and predicts that between 40 million and 170 million more people will soon be undernourished.
Climate models predict that the
impacts of climate change on agriculture
will vary by region, adding to
global inequality. Those living in high
and mid-latitudes may find that a degree
or two of warming actually improves
crop yields. Latin America’s crop and
livestock productivity will decrease,
Asia’s food security will be threatened
by alternating floods and droughts, and
sub-Saharan Africa could experience
cereal production losses of 33% by
2060. Moreover, the IPCC states that
“climate change is likely to further shift
the regional focus of food insecurity to sub-Saharan Africa. By 2080, about
75% of all people at risk of hunger are
estimated to live in this region.”
The result is a situation in which low income regions are suffering as a result of high-income, industrialized standards of living that contribute to global climate change, over which they have no control and from which they do not benefit. Policy makers, farmers, and consumers alike need to consider the impact that their decisions and diets have on the environment. Eating locally grown produce and less meat further reduces the demand for resource-heavy industrialized agriculture and livestock production, easing the burden on food prices and on those who devote the majority of their paycheck to dinner. With greater access to information about food and its effect on climate change, we can hope to make educated choices and prevent future food crises.
Other Articles in this Newsletter:
A Message from the President: Fishes, Loaves and Foresight
The Challenges of Producing Food on a Warming Planet
Reducing Our Food's Impact on Climate Change
Focus: Moving Down the Food Chain
Case Study: Agriculture in Thailand
The Biofuel Debate: Food vs. Energy?