WORLD FOOD CRISES

The impacts of climate change on land are already severe and will substantially increase food prices, risking widespread food instability, says a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Special Report on Climate Change and Land warned that a food crisis looms, especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions, if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions go unchecked. Rising temperatures may also reduce the nutritional value of crops and will significantly reduce crop yields.

·         Extreme weather events have already increased in size and intensity and are playing a role in food price spikes in recent years.

·         Extensive spring flooding in the U.S. Midwest this year led to extremely late planting of corn and soy crops, reducing potential yields. Drought wilted rice fields in Thailand and Indonesia, and scorched sugar cane plantations and oilseed crops in India.

·         Record-breaking heat waves in Europe this summer have affected many crops, including an expected 13 percent decline in French wine production.

·         “The potential for failure of multiple bread basket regions is increasing,”. Bread basket regions are places that produce large quantities of grains like the U.S. High Plains, or that produce large volumes of rice, such as Southeast Asia.

·         Crop yields and animal growth rates are already falling.

·         Nutrition levels are also expected to decline with continued CO2 emissions, putting already poor countries at very severe risk of increased hunger and malnutrition.

MAJOR REFORMS

The IPCC Special Report is the first-ever comprehensive look at the whole land-climate system. It involved 103 experts from 52 countries and weighs in at over 1300 pages. A 65-page “Summary for Policymakers” was released. “It’s an incredibly ambitious and wide-ranging report. It was difficult to get agreement on the summary”.

·         The report calls for a transformation of food systems from industrial agriculture to sustainable land management, using practices found in organic and agroecological farming.

·         We have to protect the quality of the entire landscape where food is produced. That means preventing further degradation of soils, water, insect life, or any element of the biosphere from farm field to consumers’ tables.

·         Agriculture and global food systems need to be reformed because they are a big part of the climate problem, producing about one-third of total carbon emissions.

·         However, they can be part of the solution. More efficient, sustainable forms of food production can reduce emissions, freeing up land that can be used to store carbon in soils and vegetation like trees.

·         Reductions in food loss and waste, currently estimated to be 25-30 percent of the global food produced, could have similar benefits.

INFORMED CHOICES

·         Land is under tremendous development pressures. But carbon emissions can be reduced and ecosystems protected while increasing food production. We don’t need any new technologies, just making informed choices.

·         Those include choosing to end deforestation in the tropics and protecting peatlands and coastal wetlands, along with cutting food waste and reducing meat consumption. It means choosing to scale up sustainable farming practices so that more food can be grown, while increasing organic carbon in soils, and helping small farmers improve their livelihoods, while enhancing biodiversity.

·         Protecting the world’s remaining forests as quickly as possible. The sharp increases in meat consumption in China and Asia pose a threat to forests and the climate. Eating less meat is healthier, and since over 60 percent of agricultural land is used for meat production, cutting meat consumption would free up a lot of land for reforestation.