Agricultural Consequences of Climate Change

The latest installment in the Washington Post’s In the Greenhouse: Confronting a Changing Climate series explores the jarring effects that climate change could have on farming and food supply in the decades to come.  Various analyses predict that rising temperatures, salt seepage into groundwater, and anticipated increases in flooding and droughts will disproportionately affect agricultural activity in the lower latitudes, where the majority of the world’s poor live.  Latin America could see declines in agricultural productivity of 20 percent or more by the 2080s; Africa may experience 30 percent downturns; and India could suffer worst of all with a 40 percent decline in productivity, a sobering picture given that India will be the world’s most populous country by the 2080s.

These grave scenarios are driving efforts for a new “green revolution,” aimed not only at boosting food production but also at creating crops that can “handle the heat, suck up the salt, not desiccate in a drought, and even grow swimmingly while submerged.”  Such efforts have shown promise thus far, from wheat-growing in Australia’s increasingly salty soils to planting rice with a flood-resistance gene in Bangladesh.  At the same time, the threats posed by climate change require more than the adaptation of crops; they also require the adaptation of farmers, including the utilization of new technologies and new cultivation practices.  Even still, as William R. Cline of the Center for Global Development points out, it remains to be seen whether we will be able to satisfy our fast-growing demand for food, predicted to triple by 2085.  Click here for a collage of maps and figures detailing future agricultural production and temperature changes.  Also, click here for the transcript of an online interactive discussion with William Cline about the issues covered in the article.