June 2, 2022 – If you lived through 2021, you witnessed a few of the most extraordinary weather conditions on record.
In the mild and rainy Pacific Northwest, a devastating heat wave practically roasted the berries on the bushes. For the primary time ever, the federal government declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, the country's largest reservoir, cutting off water supplies to Arizona farmers. Massive wildfires broke out in California, Washington state, Turkey, Greece and Siberia.
Meanwhile, extreme rainfall triggered deadly floods in North America, Germany and China. And in one other historic first: it rained on the summit of Greenland, where it had previously been frozen all yr round.
All of those weather events affect the food supply in a method or one other. For example, they will destroy crops, make areas inaccessible to agriculture, or trigger swarms of locusts and other pests.
More than simply weather
But beyond individual events, climate change can be changing agriculture as an entire. In some countries, farmers' yields of wheat, corn and other crops are falling as a result of severe weather. In other areas, nonetheless, latest weather patterns have increased them.
In the United States, annual rainfall has increased within the north and east of the country, but decreased within the south. This has an impact on farmers' crop yields.
“In North America, we've seen a northward shift in growing regions for some crops, like corn, over the past few decades,” says Todd Mockler, PhD, principal investigator on the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis. “More corn is being grown in southern Canada than ever before, even though this wasn't a hospitable environment 30 to 40 years ago.”
At the identical time, farms in Kansas and Oklahoma have less water for irrigation, he says. “We are seeing in real time how climate change is affecting agricultural production.”
And it's not only plants. In rural Africa, fewer and smaller animals are growing. Warming oceans are reducing food production through shellfish farming and fishing. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, thousands and thousands of individuals in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and elsewhere are already affected by climate-related food insecurity. About half the world's population suffers from extreme water shortages all year long.
Adjust and adjust
But all isn't lost. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other organizations are currently making major efforts all over the world using a technique called “climate-smart agriculture” to extend yields, reduce risks to crops and livestock, manage water and land use, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Genetic engineering of the plants themselves also helps. Most varieties of rice, for instance, die in the event that they are under water for greater than three days. In India and Bangladesh alone, enough rice is destroyed by flooding yearly to feed 30 million people. But a genetically modified variety introduced in 2013 offers hope. It can survive under water for as much as two weeks.
“My lab and other labs have been working on climate resilience for many years,” says Dr. Pamela Ronald, whose lab on the University of California, Davis, developed the brand new variety. “More than 6 million farmers are now growing this rice. It's really important for some of the poorest farmers in the world.”