"The world’s population is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050. Will we be able to feed everyone, what are the problems likely to be and what do we need to overcome these problems?” Undoubtedly food production is becoming a growing concern as factors such as the rapidly growing global population and changing diets within developing countries stretch current production techniques to the limit. The total global human population is expected to increase by 34% by 2050 with this growth occurring predominately in developing areas and with the greatest relative population increase of 120% occurring in todays least developed countries (How to feed the world in 2050, 2009). The development of these countries and the associated rise in prosperity has resulted in shifting diets which centre on an increased consumption of meat (Foley, 2014). As a result of this larger and more developed population with an increased dependency on unsustainable protein sources, food production must increase by around 70% by 2050 (How to feed the world in 2050, 2009). In addition to the strain of an increasing population, other pressures make it difficult to increase the amount of food produced. Climate change poses significant threat to food production as small changes to conditions can drastically reduce crop yields with temperature increases of just 1°C likely resulting in reductions of 5-10% in the yields of major serial crops (Tamiotti et al., 2009). Moreover, the melting of glacial ice that
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”- Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Food security is affected by our warming climate. Increase in carbon dioxide, warmer climate, negatively affects crop production and reduced yields a crop staples. Low food productions can easily lead to food insecurity in the future. Earth’s current state of human induced warming, ocean acidification, and changes in frequency and intensity of climate related factors will make many areas that already has low food production at an increased likelihood of food insecurity. A necessary adaptation to maintain or even increase food production will be to improve personal and agriculture water management and land management. Food security will continue to be dependent on the prices of internationally traded food
One of the food production challenges if the Climate change. Climate is a change in the usual weather found in a place example hot and cold weather. Either of them
The United Nations predicts that the population will go up by at least two billion people by the year 2050. Eighty percent of this new population will be in sub-Saharan Africa and in South and Southeast Asia. These are the areas where climate change will be the most felt. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that the world’s food supply is in trouble because there has been crop yield drop for corn, wheat, and rice. There are also some places the crops have stopped growing altogether. Climate change’s biggest threat could be on the world’s food supply. Something must happen should to help this issue at hand. This is where the debate of modern technology, such as genetically modified crop, should be used to help the oncoming food dilemma.
Today, the livestock sector employs 1.3 billion people and one-third of humanity’s protein intake comes from livestock products. Livestock
One aspect of our food production that would suffer from rising global temperatures is our crops. Crops are very sensitive and require very specific temperatures and water amounts to grow, and if those requirements aren’t met to their liking, the crops won’t produce to their potential. An
Agriculture is affected by climate change. In the document “As Big Food Feels Threat of Climate Change, companies speak up,” the scientist, Molly Brown, explains the impact climate change has on agriculture. By working with the satellites at NASA, Brown was able to conclude that climate change affects food production. Consequently, Brown’s experience viewing how weather patterns change grain fields and vegetable plots, provided her with that conclusion. For instance, the state of Vermont is experiencing changes in vegetation. During the month of May of this year, farmers had the specific task of planting corn. As a result of changes in the weather, the month of May experiences rain and cold temperatures. Therefore, the harvest was postponed because farmers
Currently there are 7 billion mouths to feed worldwide, and that number will only increase to 9 billion by 2050. As a result, the demand for meat is expected to grow by more than two-thirds, which means we will need to produce 70% more meat on the same amount of land currently being cultivated and harvested for food production. 26% of Earth’s ice-free surface alone is used just for grazing livestock.
As humanity has evolved, new inventions and tools have been created to increase food production. However, these inventions have started to affect the environment. To increase the food production and to minimize the waste of resources used in production, such as land, water and energy, more eco-friendly technologies for the sector agriculture are required. (Segrè & Gaiani, 2012). “Food production poses significant threats to the environment through greenhouse gas emissions, pollution from fertilizers and pesticides, and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services from the conversion of vast amounts of natural ecosystems into croplands and pastures” (Tilman & Clark, 2015, p. 8). In regard to the influence of climate change on
“There are many future challenges to increasing food production globally, including slowing agricultural productivity growth, the impacts of climate change, and increased competition for scarce resources such
Over the last half century, the population of humans has doubled, the food supply tripled and this has caused an increase in life expectancy for many. People used to live up to the age of 46 in 1950’s. However, today the average life expectancy is approximately 65 years. ** This information suggests that for the last half century, there has been a sufficient supply of food for the growing human population. Nevertheless, combined impacts of many factors have caused experts to once again suggest that there may be a possible food crisis to come. These factors include climate change, forest denudation, land degradation, water shortage, declining oil supplies, species extinction, destruction of coastal ecosystems and the growing demands for a meat-rich diet from newly developed parts of the world.
Climate change is already affecting many of the food sources available globally. Farmers across the world are experiencing the ebb and flow of temperature changes, droughts, floods, windstorms, and fires. These climatic disasters lead to issues with livestock and crop productivity, and thus, a shortage of food.
Climate change will only make things worse as elevated levels of CO2 reduce the nutritional content of grains, tubers and legumes, affecting key nutrients such as zinc and iron. The estimated impact of undernutrition on gross domestic product (GDP) is 11% every year – more than the annual economic downturn caused by the global financial crisis. A growing population means more mouths to feed.
Firstly, climate change has a big impact with world hunger. Climate change may affect food systems in several ways ranging from direct effects on crop production (e.g. changes in rainfall leading to drought or flooding, or warmer or cooler temperatures leading to changes in the length of growing season), to changes in markets, food prices and supply chain infrastructure (Gregory, Ingram & Brklacich, 2005, p.2139). It can trigger a natural disaster like drought and flood, which can have an extreme effect with the problems in the sources of food. In one hand, drought is a common scenario in farm lands in which
As a result, climate change and its impacts are evident at both global and local scales (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2014). According to the Ontario Centre for Climate Impacts and Adaptation Resources (OCCAR), climate change impacts have induced negative consequences to the agricultural sectors as crops are highly sensitive to regional climatic conditions (OCCAR, 2011). Since agriculture is a fundamental sector as it generates food-crops to sustain the world’s populations as well as contributes billions of GDP to the nations’ economies each year, it is recommended that preventive mechanisms and adaptive measures to climate variations are to be implemented.