Grain, Potato Production Already Declining In Bangladesh - "Will Deplete Steadily" As Climate Warms

[hatrack]

DHAKA - Rising temperatures will hurt food production in Bangladesh, and millions of people could be displaced as the seas around the low-lying nation rise, environment experts said on Tuesday.

"It is really worrying that production of our main food crops rice, wheat and potato has already started to decline," said Ainun Nishat, an environment expert at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. "Production will deplete steadily as the climate changes more and more, and by 2015 Bangladesh, along with neighbouring countries, may be forced to look for new brand of crops," he told Reuters.

"With the changing behaviour of weather, time of rainfall has changed, drought has become more rampant while threats of more flooding also loom," Nishat said. He said higher temperatures and concentration of carbon dioxide in the air was hurting crop output.

The water flow in the country's main rivers has also depleted, especially in summer when most food crops are sown in agrarian Bangladesh, home to more than 140 million people, mostly rice-eaters. The supply of fish from the rivers has declined across the country, due also to the increased salinity in the rivers along the shores of the Bay of Bengal.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42429/story.htm

[kestrel91316]

1. This isn't going to end well for those people......

[phantom power]

2. We're *all* those people.

[kestrel91316]

3. True. But they will be affected worse, sooner.

Not sure how they managed to EVER grow potatoes in Bangladesh anyway. They aren't a tropical/subtropical crop.......