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The Health Of The Human Race

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The health of the human race relies on the earth’s resources for consumption of food and water. This dependency is crucial in order to maintain and sustain the future existence of humans on Earth. Unfortunately, as the world faces agricultural problems such as: price increases, overpopulation, and climate change, attaining food has proven to become more difficult. Food crises are issues that have plagued humans across the globe currently and historically. What makes this particular topic important is not only the innate human need for food, but the fact that this complex problem is characterized by a complex web of environmental and economic causes. Upon investigation of different food crises throughout history, the most important causes …show more content…

As population grows, agricultural production will also grow which creates excessive amounts of green house gases from fertilizers, cultivation of livestock, and emissions of fuel from tractors and trucks (populationinstitute.org). 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 has caused an immense rise in ocean temperatures causing some marine life to stray further away from fisheries in search of cooler water (epa.gov/climatechange). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that over 40 million people in the Lower Mekong delta in Asia rely on fisheries for food (epa.gov/climatechange). The issue of melting Arctic ice caps changes the sea level which has affected water quality and amount of different marine species in this area (epa.gov/climatechange). The future of climate change is detrimental to regions that are currently affected by drought. For example, Australia and the Sahel region in Africa will be exposed to lower irrigation quantities (epa.gov/climatechange). In addition lower latitude areas are also like to experience a drop in crop production due to lack of water. Some African countries that depend on “rain-fed crops,” may experience a 50%

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