Perilous Times and Climate Change
Global experts: Warming to double world food prices
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 1, 2010; 4:54 PM
CANCUN, Mexico -- Even if we stopped spewing global warming gases
today, the world would face a steady rise in food prices this century.
But on our current emissions path, climate change becomes the "threat
multiplier" that could double grain prices by 2050 and leave millions
more children malnourished, global food experts reported Wednesday.
Beyond 2050, when climate scientists project temperatures might rise to
as much as 6.4 degrees C (11.5 degrees F) over 20th century levels, the
planet grows "gloomy" for agriculture, said senior research fellow
Gerald Nelson of the International Food Policy Research Institute.
The specialists of the authoritative, Washington-based IFPRI said they
fed 15 scenarios of population and income growth into supercomputer
models of climate and found that "climate change worsens future human
well-being, especially among the world's poorest people."
The study, issued here at the annual U.N. climate conference, said
prices will be driven up by a combination of factors: a slowdown in
productivity in some places caused by warming and shifting rain
patterns, and an increase in demand because of population and income
growth.
Change apparently already is under way. Returning from northern India,
agricultural scientist Andrew Jarvis said wheat farmers there were
finding warming was maturing their crops too quickly.
"The temperatures are high and they're getting reduced yields," Jarvis,
of the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture,
told reporters last month.
For most farmers around the world, trying to adapt to these changes
"will pose major challenges," Wednesday's IFPRI report said.
Research points to future climate disruption for agricultural zones in
much of sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and parts of Latin America,
including Mexico. In one combination of climate models and scenarios,
"the corn belt in the United States could actually see a significant
reduction in productivity potential," Nelson told reporters here.
"Unlike the 20th century, when real agricultural prices declined, the
first half of the 21st century is likely to see increases in real
agricultural prices," the IFPRI report said.
Even with "perfect mitigation," the implausible complete elimination
immediately of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, it
said real prices for grain would rise because of growing demand and
other factors - by 18 percent for rice by 2050 under the most
optimistic scenario, to up to 34 percent for corn in the most
pessimistic, a scenario envisioning high population growth.
But climate change "acts as a threat multiplier," making feeding
billions more mouths even more challenging, IFPRI said.
With climate change factored in, the increases in real prices by 2050
could range from 31 percent for rice in the most optimistic scenario,
to 100 percent for corn in the most pessimistic. And IFPRI has
estimated that such skyrocketing prices could boost the global
population of undernourished children by 20 percent, by an additional
25 million children.
Up until 2050, endpoint of the experts' projections, some of the impact
could be offset by research development of higher-yielding varieties of
corn, wheat and other crops, and by freer, more flexible global trade
in food commodities, IFPRI said.
But beyond 2050, if temperatures rise sharply, "the world is a much
more gloomy place for agriculture," Nelson said.
Only deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and billions spent to
help farmers adapt to a changing climate can head off serious food
shortages, Nelson said. IFPRI, which is supported by world governments,
estimates that at least $7 billion additional spending a year is needed
for crop research and improved irrigation, roads and other upgrades of
agricultural infrastructure.
Needed just as much, it said, are better satellite data on how the
world's farming zones are changing crops, land use and practices, and
on-the-ground information from "citizen data-gatherers equipped with
GPS-enabled camera phones and other measuring devices.
"Such data would yield huge payoffs in illuminating the state of the
world as it unfolds," it said.