Climate Change Threatens Food Supply in Many Regions

[donsu]

http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2008-02-01-voa21.cfm


A new study highlights the threat to food production posed by climate change. And scientists say regions that already face food security issues are among the most vulnerable.

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Lobell and his team from Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment focused on 12 areas in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where many of the world's hungriest people live. They found different crops would be affected in different areas.

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Experts say you don't have to project into the future to see the impact of global warming on food production. At a Congressional hearing this week, the head of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. R.K. Pachauri, said the impact on agriculture from even modest temperature increases is already being observed.

PACHAURI: "There is evidence from my own country, India, where agricultural scientists are now finding that several crops are actually experiencing declines in yields. Wheat in particular. Wheat is very, very sensitive to temperature increases. If those temperature increases are anywhere between 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, they have a major impact, and we have growing evidence of that in India."

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David Lobell and his colleagues published their paper on climate change and food security in the February 1 edition of the journal Science.
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this also means people will be on the move away from not enough food areas.

and where they move to will up the population in that place - needing more food.

there will be violence.

new varities are OK but, NO NO, to modified seeds

[existentialist]

1. Out in this part of the boondocks, which is a significant

food producing area, the primary factor is not temperature, but precipitation.

Last year, although the reservoirs and ground water remain extremely depleted, there was timely precipitation, and the area produced bumper crops.

However, last year was an anomaly in the trend, and most computer models indicate this area becoming a desert.