By Sherezade Rodriguez
Future food security depends on how well agriculture can adapt to climate change, according to a visiting scholar who recently spoke at UF.
Stanford University Associate Professor David Lobell, also the associate director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, spoke as part of the Florida Climate Institute’s Distinguished Scholar Seminar series. Global warming, specifically the increased periods of extreme heat, he said, will affect food security in the coming years. Click here to watch his seminar.
“It’s been hard to find something that hasn’t been affected by climate change over the last five years,” Lobell said. “However, we have been making progress by keeping the annual food cost relatively low. In a developed country, it’s currently costing us between $50 to $70 per year to feed one person the amount of calories they need in one day.”
Historical data and research predicts that a 60- to 100- percent increase in food production will be needed to meet the demands of the nine billion people estimated to live on Earth during 2050. Even though food producers are now able to generate grains of wheat that are three times bigger than they were 50 years ago, scientists including Lobell fear that food production won’t be able to keep up with the gradual, yet extreme, weather conditions.
“Extreme heat doesn’t only affect how much corn or wheat we are producing,” said Lobell. “High temperatures also affect the human psychology and often ends up causing more crimes, rapes and political violence. As we know, these types of conflict are also great contributors to food insecurity.”
By using data from the USDA Risk Management Agency, Lobell and colleagues have noted how weather affects crop yields. By studying charts from as far back as 1996, Lobell identified a correlation between high temperatures and low crop yield.
“Through genetic modification, scientists have been able to pick and choose the characteristics of a crop,” said Lowell. “However, we need strategies that are systematically targeting stressful conditions.”
Other people argue that gradual weather changes give crops enough time to adapt to weather conditions, Lobell said, but data shows this may not be the case.
