FUTURE OF FOOD: How will humanity ensure a steady supply of staple crops, like this maize, as population swells and climate changes?
Image: Courtesy of CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture
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Farmers have coped with fickle weather since the dawn of human agriculture, and may have even kicked off local climate changes with early forest-clearing and the like. But agriculture has never before faced the extent of the challenge posed by contemporary global warming, which could result in an increase in extreme weather or simply subtle shifts in rainfall patterns that ultimately leave vital crops parched.
Pair that with a world population growing in both absolute terms and hunger for agriculturally intensive products such as meat and you may have a recipe for disaster. In recent years, food crises have helped spur regime change while yields of the world's most important staple crops have begun to falter after decades of healthy supplies.
In a bid to examine and encourage sprouts of hope, Arizona State University, the New America Foundation and Slate are hosting a Future Tense event on the future of agriculture under a changing climate, set for April 12 in Washington, D.C. Among other illuminating discussions, I will be moderating a panel on present, past and future food crises with Hans Herren, president of the Millennium Institute and past World Food Prize winner, and Ed Carr, a climate change advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development and author of the provocative book Delivering Development: Globalization's Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
I am also set to moderate a panel with Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, Bill Hohenstein of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Megan Stasz of the Grocery Manufacturers Association on how we might adapt ourselves—and our food systems—to the coming change.
The question is: Do we have another (truly) Green Revolution in us after decades of complacency?
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13 Comments
Add CommentRegime change?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHint ..read 'The Economist'. The 21st century has so far been 'by far' the most peaceful in written history. Lower percent of humans dying from violece than any decade.
Hint: tere has always been 'regime change'. Heard of the American Revolution?
Where is the evidence to support the claim that:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhile yields of the world's most important staple crops have begun to falter after decades of healthy supplies.
It is my understanding that food production, particularly grain harvests are at an all time high.
The food empire will soon collapse. The collapse will be almost overnight. The internal combustion engine will likely be banned. I would like to know how that will affect production.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExaggerated baloney in this article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgriculture certainly did face greater challenges in the past than today. China is a country 1.3 billion people and those 1.3 billion people have food to eat. There were times in the last century when up to 10 million people a year in China starved to death....the same with India in the past. Read about crop disasters in the Soviet Union in the 1920's...it was the first large scale case of American relief and helped to save millions.
"There is simply no responsibility for one nation to supply food to other nations."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile this is certainly the mantra of the Romney campaign and the philosophy of the republican party in general, it is a death trap for a culture as dependent on foreign food imports and for that matter everything else we used to make in America, as we are now.
America has long since passed the point of no return when it comes to self sufficiency. We are simply in no position to return to the days of the pioneers.
The fact is that America is no longer the bread basket of the world. We import far more food then we export. It absolutely amazes me how many people don't know that the only thing America exports more then we import is services and technology, and big money is trying it's best to turn that around too.
Conservatives want to subsidies oil while insisting that education and science grants are a waste of taxpayers money. They need to look up the definition of conservative one day.
Climate change has already resulted in catastrophic crop damage on a global level. Look into the wheat harvest in Russia during the heat wave of 2010 or the East African drought of 2011 and mass famine now happening in that region of the world. These are just two examples of many. Try and tell the Australians that their weather is not getting hotter and more extreme as they struggle to adapt planting schedules and built dams to control the new wave of massive flooding in their most agriculturally productive regions and divert water to the persistent drought areas that are now the norm since the turn of the century.
You people that are living in lala land and think technology will solve or food problems, while at the same time thumbing their noses to green technology need to wake up. The wake up call is already past history.
BTW the phoney 'green revolution' pioneered by Monsanto and their GM rice products destroyed thousands of years of sustainable rice cultivation in The Philippines and Bali. They have now gone back to tradition methods of pest control and crop rotation. Look into that before you preach the benefits of corporate irresponsibility.
Look into the recent reports on bee colony collapse that finally pinned it down to pesticide overuse, a fact denied by big-agri nearly a decade now.
Science, financial resources and helping each other on a global scale is the key to man's survival, and denying that aid at this point in the game will only hasten our self destruction.
Australia has less drought declared area than at any time in the last century. Flood & drought are a natural cycle in this country. Despite a growing population, no new dams of any significant size have been built in the last decade, largely as a result of the objections of the Greens & climate scientists claims during the last drought that our rivers would never run again. As a result billions of dollars were spent on desalination plants that are now redundant but still costing millions to maintain. Much more than a dam building programme would cost with many times the capacity & at a fraction of the cost. A huge holding dam built after the Brisbane flood of 1974 specifically to act as a buffer was not operated as per its designed purpose. Instead of releasing water once it had reached a pre determined level, in the face of imminent weather warnings of a huge rain event, water was not released until the dam was in serious danger from over filling. Water was then released in a panic mode, adding billions of dollars to the costs of the resultant damage. After all the scaremongering about water shortages becoming a permanent feature, the controllers failed to release the water in compliance with the manual to mitigate the floods. Instead they made it worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, & we are having record harvests.
Mr. Biello, what food crisis? Poverty crisis is more like it. The world is producing enough food to make all 7 billion people obese. That's 3,000 kcal/day/person but the recommended diet is only 2,000 kcal/day/person.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne billion people are hungry because they are poor. One-third of food production is being wasted. Plus cattle alone eat more food than humans. Not to mention the swine, sheeps, goats. Plus bio-ethanol takes up a quarter of all corn production in the US.
There's so much food that we're wasting them, feeding them to animals, turning them into fuel, except feeding the poor.
Quote: There's so much food that we're wasting them, feeding them to animals, turning them into fuel, except feeding the poor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnswer: We feed ourselves. It's OTHERS who don't feed themselves. If a country such as the United States WANTS to grow genetically altered corn to fuel their jets they are allowed. The key to feeding the world is 'teaching the man to fish' as opposed to giving him the fish ? As a for instance , one could propose , in the North West United States they have shut down wind turbines because they have no use for the power. It costs millions to just have them sit still. One could propose to buy that power , build whatever USING that power and the win win for the government is obvious. The 'greenhouse' method of a million pounds of food on three acres would work perfectly there. Imho.
"1 MILLION pounds of Food on 3 acres"
http://www.dump.com/millionpounds
You wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf a nation can not or does not control their population growth and can not feed their people it is that nations problem to resolve. Starvation has historically been a natural byproduct of unsupportable population growth.
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Poker, as usual, is making up stuff based upon a simpleton's line of logic. A majority of starvation is the result of politics, war, and food distribution inefficiencies.
Just an example:
http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/Famine,%20Corruption,%20the%20Media%20and%20Democracy.ppt#258,6,Slide 6
(And there are three grammatical errors in your blurb that I cited.)
I can not get your link to work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy bad. Cut and paste ending in "ppt".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks. Interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have no moral obligation to feed the poor. I'm not preaching morality. The point is there's more than enough food for everybody but the poor cannot afford it. The problem is poverty not food supply.
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