Food Security Farming And Climate Change To 2050

As the global population grows and incomes in poor countries rise, so too, will the demand for food, placing additional pressure on sustainable food production. Climate change adds a further challenge, as changes in temperature and precipitation threaten agricultural productivity and the capacity to feed the world's population. This study assesses how serious the danger to food security might be and suggests some steps policymakers can take to remedy the situation.Using various modeling techniques, the authors project 15 different future scenarios for food security through 2050. Each scenario involves an alternative combination of potential population and income growth and climate change. The authors also examine the specific test case of a hypothetical extended drought in South Asia, to demonstrate the possible effects of increased climate variability on a particular world region. They conclude that the negative effects of climate change on food security can be counteracted by broad-based economic growthparticularly improved agricultural productivityand robust international trade in agricultural products to offset regional shortages. In pursuit of these goals, policymakers should increase public investment in land, water, and nutrient use and maintain relatively free international trade. This inquiry into the future of food security should be of use to policymakers and others concerned with the impact of climate change on international development.

This book features a comprehensive foresight assessment, exploring the pressures — threats as well as opportunities — on the global agriculture & food systems between now and 2050. The overarching aim is to help readers understand the context, by analyzing global trends and anticipating change for better planning and constructing pathways from the present to the future by focusing on the right questions and problems. The book contextualizes the role of international agricultural research in addressing the complex challenges posed by UN 2030 Agenda and beyond, and identifies the decisions that scientific leaders, donors and policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to nine billion or more combined with rising incomes and changing diets can be fed sustainably and equitably, in the face of the growing climate threats.

Ever-increasing population growth, combined with ongoing climate change signals that agriculture will face great challenges in ensuring global food security by 2050. Additionally, climate change-driven variations in mean sea level, wave conditions, storm surge, droughts, and river flows could have serious effects on agriculture and other sectors. Considering these factors and the extremely high value and necessity of agriculture worldwide, effective adaptation measures underpinned by reliable climate change impact assessments are essential to conserve soil and water resources and ensure food security. Sustainable Agriculture: Adaptation Strategies to Address Climate Change by 2050 provides a thorough examination of these issues, and presents in-depth analysis, practical case studies, and numerous examples of adaptation options throughout for various regions of the world. Features: Presents up-to-date, scientifically robust information on climate change projections in Europe, Asia, America, Africa, and Australia Provides pathways to sustainable agricultural options rather than just defining the climate change issue Includes case studies and practical examples throughout the world Presents a framework by which policymakers can begin implementing strategies for improving agricultural productivity

Roughly a billion people around the world continue to live in state of chronic hunger and food insecurity. Unfortunately, efforts to improve their livelihoods must now unfold in the context of a rapidly changing climate, in which warming temperatures and changing rainfall regimes could threaten the basic productivity of the agricultural systems on which most of the world’s poor directly depend. But whether climate change represents a minor impediment or an existential threat to development is an area of substantial controversy, with different conclusions wrought from different methodologies and based on different data. This book aims to resolve some of the controversy by exploring and comparing the different methodologies and data that scientists use to understand climate’s effects on food security. In explains the nature of the climate threat, the ways in which crops and farmers might respond, and the potential role for public and private investment to help agriculture adapt to a warmer world. This broader understanding should prove useful to both scientists charged with quantifying climate threats, and policy-makers responsible for crucial decisions about how to respond. The book is especially suitable as a companion to an interdisciplinary undergraduate or graduate level class.

Climate change is a significant and growing threat to food security—already affecting vulnerable populations in many developing countries, and expected to affect ever more people in more places, unless action is taken beginning today. Current scenarios for business-as-usual farming under climate change project growing food security challenges by 2050. Worst hit will be underdeveloped regions of the world where food insecurity is already a problem and populations are vulnerable to shocks (Rosegrant et al. 2014). Improvements in agricultural technology and management are expected to increase food security, but if we do not address climate change, climate-related losses in crop and livestock productivity will reduce those gains (Lobell and Gourdji 2012). In this challenging environment, countries will need to contend with shifts in which crops they can best produce, significant changes in global prices, and change in countries’ comparative advantages. New analytical tools that allow policy makers and decision makers to integrate data from the global to the local level offer an important opportunity for countries to identify the most effective ways to address climate change. As the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) gets underway and the role of agriculture as a key element in reducing emissions is widely recognized, countries can use these tools to identify locally appropriate policies that will reduce the impact of climate change on food security over the long term.

The world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. Climate change, population, and income growth will drive food demand in the coming decades. Baseline scenarios show food prices for maize, rice, and wheat would significantly increase between 2005 and 2050, and the number of people at risk of hunger in the developing world would grow from 881 million in 2005 to more than a billion people by 2050. Food Security in a World of Natural Resource Scarcity: The Role of Agricultural Technologies examines which current and potential strategies offer solutions to fight hunger. The type and effectiveness of agricultural technologies are highly debated, and the debates are often polarized. Technology options are many, but transparent evidence-based information has been inconclusive or scarce. This book endeavors to respond to the challenge of growing food sustainably without degrading our natural resource base. The authors use a groundbreaking modeling approach that combines comprehensive process-based modeling of agricultural technologies with sophisticated global food demand, supply, and trade modeling. This approach assesses the yield and food impact through 2050 of a broad range of agricultural technologies under varying assumptions of climate change for the three key staple crops: maize, rice, and wheat. Geared toward policymakers in ministries of agriculture and national agricultural research institutes, as well as multilateral development banks and the private sector, Food Security in a World of Natural Resource Scarcity provides guidance on various technology strategies and which to pursue as competition grows for land, water, and energy across productive sectors and even increasingly across borders. The book is an important tool for targeting investment decisions today and going forward.

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

After a first foresight study on ‘World food security in 2050’ (Agrimonde), CIRAD and INRA have turned their attention to a new foresight exercise on ‘Land use and food security in 2050’ (Agrimonde-Terra). This new study seeks to highlight levers that could modify ongoing land-use patterns for improved food and nutrition security. Agrimonde-Terra proposes a trend analysis on the global context, climate change, food diets, urban-rural linkages, farm structures, cropping and livestock systems, and explores five scenarios. Three scenarios entitled ‘Metropolization’, ‘Regionalization’ and ‘Households’ are based on current competing trends identified in most world regions. Two scenarios entitled ‘Healthy’ and ‘Communities’ involve potential breaks that could change the entire land use and food security system. The ‘Healthy’ scenario is the only one that makes it possible to achieve sustainable world food and nutrition security in 2050. Nevertheless, current trends in agricultural and food systems in most parts of the world converge towards the ‘Metropolization’ scenario, which is not sustainable in terms of both land use and human health. Therefore, changing the course of ongoing trends in favor of sustainable land uses and healthy food systems will be one of the main challenges of the next decades. It will require systemic transformation, strong and coherent public policies across sectors and scales, and consistent actions from a wide range of actors. This foresight provides a large information base on land uses, food systems and food security and constitutes a tool box to stimulate debates, imagine new policies and innovations. It aims to empower decision makers, stakeholders, non-governmental organizations and researchers to develop a constructive dialogue on the futures of land uses and food security at either world, regional and national levels.